I Wuz Gonna...

I wuz gonna write about Edmund Burke's The Philosophy of the Sublime and the Beautiful, but I have to go running at 5:00 AM. This does not allow me enough time to set out my screed on the Sublime.

I was talking to someone yester morn - after running - and it seems that I have been jogging for 45 years. There was no Nike when I started, only Converse. We ran in scrimmage togs and old exercise clothes; there were no fancy-pants running suits.
I still won't buy expensive running stuff just to sweat in. My wife shakes her head, and tells me to wash that stuff and put it in the dust rag pile instead of wearing it, but I keep on.

Of course, when you get to my age, it becomes tricky to differentiate the problem aches and pains from the myriad of the normal, everyday aches and pains. I mean, one cannot stop running just because of the normal acute discomfort. One can stop only for the new acute discomfort.

I like running. There is no "Zen" in running for me; it is just that I prefer the pain of running to the pain of not running. My entire frame will fall into a painful desuetude if I do not exercise... so I exercise.
I remember when I ran exclusively outdoors, I would not run in the rain. I could not remember why at first, but then it came to me that the rain covered my glasses and obscured my vision. I could have left the glasses off - I do not wear them when I run on the treadmill - but I always ran early, and often it was dark, and those asphalt streets without eyeglasses were often just dark and inky pools of nothingness in the rain. I preferred not to experience the melancholy of running off the edge of the world!
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