When I was in middle school, I participated in "fun runs" held at a Shore high school track 200 yards from the beach under the Friday night lights of an amusement park on one side and a highrise on the other. Looking back, this was as much a social event for parents as it was a way to run excitable pre-teens into the ground.
The proximity of this track to the ocean created a wall of wind on half the track - sometimes the wind was a truck running you over and other times it was simply ever-present and accounted for in your 7:07 minute mile that was supposed to be south of 6:30 min.
At 12, it was long established what kids were naturals and which were not. I was not. My best friend, was. To say this irritated me would be the kind of understatement only another siblingless individual could understand. Simply put, I was out for blood at every "fun run," to no avail, and her parents still have each of her "1st place" medals in her room at her childhood home.
In our last race of the Summer of '92, I left it all on the track. For 3.5 laps into a 4 lap mile, I was winning; her brown ponytail was not whipping back and forth in front of me and she was not leading, I was.
And then the wind hit us.
Rather, the wind hit me, as she was drafting behind me and, ultimately reserving enough energy to; lay it out in in the end and crush me. Lesson learned and remembered (clearly).
The wind can be harsh and biting or it can design the perfect ending to the perfect run. Ultimately, as I learned the hard way, the choice is yours, runners.
Last night, the wind almost made me regret my trek up the Art Museum steps. While it may have meant to simply knock me back, the wind also turned me around, at dusk, to look down the parkway at a crisp city on a clear night. The silence was beautiful and the moment it created I will not soon forget. In that perfect ending, the wind truly was my friend.
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