The Body Had Already Decided

Thursday morning. The alarm went off and I sat up and my legs had a plan that I had not been consulted on. That is the only honest way to describe how the run happened. I was standing on the sidewalk in the dark in my running shoes before I had formally agreed to anything.

The route went the way it goes now, the original loop plus the second corner, the one I added without deciding to add it back in January. The leaves on the street are starting to turn, that particular October stage where a few have gone early and the rest are still holding on, and the light at six-forty in the morning has that flat quality that has not yet softened into anything warmer. I ran through it. I did not think about much. That is still the thing that surprises me most about a settled running habit: the mind goes quiet in a way it does not go quiet on the mat or on the wall or on the boulder. Those require attention. The run eventually stops requiring it.

The last stretch, mind already quiet

I stood outside the community center for a minute at the end, not because I needed to stop there but because I always do. Hands on knees, the specific thirty seconds after the body decides it is finished.

Right after the stop, that specific thirty seconds

The cord shadow on the windowsill was doing something slightly new when I got back, lower angle now, the first week of October will do that, and I stood in the kitchen with coffee and looked at it for a minute before I thought about anything else. The body had already decided. The mind showed up later. That seems right.