i think i’m done gunnin’ to get closer
to some imagined bliss
i gotta knuckle down
and just be ok with this

— ani

—

Wow. That hurt.

I spent the morning reading various discussions on running with cracked ribs. Consensus seems to be  it’s OK. Or possibly it will kill me.

With that assurance, I went out for four. I can’t run at all; the pounding is just too much. So I’m strolling. But I can’t get much faster than 18-minute pace because I can only take shallow breaths.

I concoct a rationale of how walking in pain is good training for races when you’re in trouble. Maybe I’ll bring a baseball bat tomorrow and whack my head now and then. This could revolutionize the running world.

So basically, I’m just a broken old man shuffling along the best I can. But all you can do is all you can do, and that’s what I did.

But what’s to complain about. It’s a beautiful day, I saw some flowers, scared some Baptists, sweated, traded salutes with a yard-work guy with a weed eater. I thought about little kids left homeless in the China rubble, the plight of Rex Ryan, the unthinkably black spirits of people who would use a puppy as a target. I thought about the people who volunteer to clean shelter puppies up, and the photos of the Chinese soldiers sprinting down an impassable road in the remote hopes of saving one life. I thought about the 68-year-old earthquake survivor who said simply, “Now I have no home to go, so I don’t know what I am going to do.”

I’m not suffering. I’m just playing. I don’t even know what pain feels like. I’m saying a prayer for those who do …