38 Days.

38 days from today, 30,000 people will be corralled in front of Central High School, waiting for the rope in front of them to release the tide, dialing up the volume on their iPods and wondering how the crazies (me) who refuse to pack into the street, will jump the fence from the sidewalk and join the rush down Broad Street. 

38 days from today, I'll get up at 4:30AM, throw on my running clothes, eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich with a lemonade vitamin water and a cup of coffee and meet my team in Center City around 6AM.  From there we will travel, together, up to the Central High School track to join the thousands of other runners doing their warm-ups. 

38 days from today, I'll attend the Runner's Mass at Our Lady of Hope at 7AM. I will sit in that beautifully, ancient church, look up at the cathedral ceilings and around at the pews filled with runners and pray.  I will think back to the five blocks I started with in December, the 8 miles I ran this morning at 5AM and all the miles in between and realize that I am lucky.

38 days from today, I will smile at you if you make eye contact and I will show you how much I love this race - just give me that moment.  Then, turn it around and show another stranger how happy you are to be there, at that moment. 

I often describe the Broad Street Run as a movement.  Partly, because it's crowded (by runners and spectators) and, as runners, we flow off each other, but mostly because it's a powerful thing to master a City this way, in a straight line down its core. 

38 days from today.