3.1 Miles, Eventually

October 25th. I finished a 5K this morning. I am going to just say that plainly before I find a way to qualify it into nothing.

Eight months ago, March, I think, or right at the edge of March, I ran one block and noticed it two buildings later. I wrote about the two-buildings-later noticing eventually, and then I wrote about the second block, and the third, and somewhere in the fall I ran the full original solo route without telling anyone I was going to. And then I added a second corner. And then, quietly, I registered for a local 5K, the one that loops through the neighborhood every October, and I did not write about registering because I had already learned that I do better with things when I don't announce them before they happen.

The race was small. The finish line was a banner hung between two poles. I crossed it without sprinting, without crying, without doing anything except finishing, which is, I think, what eight months of one-block-at-a-time looks like when it arrives somewhere. I bent over afterward and put my hands on my knees and stayed like that for a while.

Just past the line. Hands on knees. Entirely fine.

Then someone handed me a paper cup of water and I stood there holding it with both hands and let my mind go very quiet.

Post-race water. Pre-everything-else.

The draft-folder sentence I wrote the night before I registered said: 'the body decides before the mind consents.' I think that's still true. I don't know when I decided to run a 5K. I just know I'm already home, showered, and sitting at the kitchen table with the prints still leaning against the wall and Gerald doing whatever Gerald does on a Sunday, and I ran 3.1 miles this morning. That happened. I'm going to let it stay happened without adding anything else to it.