Running: June 2004 Archives

Odd how at times a song lifts you over hurdles. I was running yesterday, with the mini iPod shuffling songs. I'm just now back into marathon training, the longer runs are still difficult, so at mile 8 I was running out of gas and thinking this is for the birds. Then Jackson Browne's "Before the Deluge" started playing. I'm not religious, but some gospel music is special. Its beat and message are uplifting, often without any overt persuasion in its spirituality. It can change the moment. "Before the Deluge" has that beat and message, and as the song played my fatigue became less noticeable and the hills were less difficult. Then the song's refrain:

Let the music keep our spirits high,
Let the buildings keep our children dry.
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky.

Those are beautiful lines, ones I wish I had written, and hearing them at that particular moment yesterday while running on a remarkably early autumn-like summer day in St. Louis, at a moment when I was ready to give up, ready to stop and walk the rest of the way to the gym--well, I was back into a runner's high, not running fast by any means, but still running and having fun.

Here's a similar kind of commentary by Jimmy Guterman.

The last time I saw the Olympic torch was eight years ago when it was passing through Buffalo on its cross country trip to Atlanta. That was the summer Olympics of the knapsack bomb, but the torch as it came into Buffalo's Niagara Square was a beautiful site. An early summer evening with a cool breeze blowing off Lake Erie. The next morning was even more beautiful. Lone runners bearing the torch through the country side of Western New York, I think on its way toward Rochester and Syracuse, roughly following the Erie Canal.

For the 2004 Athens Olympics, St. Louis is one of four cities in the United States that the torch will pass through. Yesterday the torch was in Los Angeles. Early this morning the torch flew aboard Zeus to here, starting its route through St. Louis at the Arch, then winding through the suburbs toward Washington University and Forest Park, where the Olympics were held a hundred years ago. I saw the torch as it ran through Clayton, directly in front of St. Louis Bread Company and directly across the street from Starbucks. The crowd was less than a hundred, but we all cheered and waved our flags while drinking the new C2 Coke.

It's funny how we'll wait to see something when the actual sight is much shorter than the wait. We'll wait at a curb to see a hearse pass bearing someone famous; we'll wait at a corner to see a torch pass. What makes the wait worth the sight is not the sight of a torch passing but the contemplation of what the sight means, what it signifies. The torch is the vehicle of what we hope will be a good game, of the myth that we willing accept: that the world can set aside arms for sport. It's an idea worth celebrating.

I don't live far from Forest Park. The torch must be there now. I can't see the fireworks, too many trees, but I can hear the cracks and pops and booms.