I went for a solo run for the first time in a while. I've run a few times in the past weeks with my daughters to keep us active, but this was the first time in at least a month I've gone out alone. I ran my favorite course through the cemetery in part because it's my favorite distance, five miles. I felt great.

I'm rereading Chris McDougall's Born To Run. My daughter asked, "how many times have you read that?" Six or eight, I said, though it's more like ten. She rolled her eyes and left the room. What can I say? I know what I like and sometimes prefer rereading to reading anything new. Plus, the book is all about long runs and pushing against what's accepted. I'm at the part where Scott Jurek gets up from the pavement in Death Valley and wins the 135-mile Badwater race in temperatures no one was ever intended to survive let alone run through. I love reading this sort of thing.

Our new bathroom scale arrived. The old one gave out. I wonder if it got tired of me. I'm pretty heavy and it's not the pandemic that has done it. I gained twenty-seven pounds last year in a job that was killing me. I left the job but kept the weight. I'm 221 pounds when I should max out at 200 and really should be down at 185. I am working to be healthier, but losing twenty-one pounds, let alone thirty-six, isn't something I can accomplish in an afternoon without lopping off a limb. It's a long run I've struggled to ever finish. I tend to walk off the course and grab a hot fudge sundae.

Monday I start a new job. Last year, I ran for my life from teaching and went to work for the Syracuse Community Center Collaborative. That job proved to be the best I've ever had. I got to work with and for great people who patiently trained me, believed in my talent, and trusted me — the exact opposite of my teaching life. So why am I leaving after just shy of eleven months? I applied for and was accepted as the new executive director of the Syracuse Northeast Community Center. In eleven months on the job I have moved to the highest position. Fourteen months ago I described my life as "I'm treading water as I bleed to death." Now, I'm embarking on a fantastic adventure.

The thing about the long run is that there are stops along the way and things to see. On my solo run through the cemetery I passed a stone labeled "Abbott Costello" and for the hundredth time smiled imagining a cemetery rewrite of "Who's On First." I ran without thinking of mileage or effort. I felt no fatigue, felt like I could just keep running and running. And though I'm unlikely to be significantly lighter from one run, my spirit is just a bit lighter and maybe that will show up on the scale.

Sometimes the long run turns out shorter than I expect. Last year I decided to quit a terrible job and just see what might happen. You know what happened? One good thing and another and another. I can't see any good reason not to keep expecting these good things. Sure, there's always another long run, a finish line so far away it's hidden by the curvature of the Earth, the turning of the calendars pages. And the road can be hard. There were hills in my solo run today that took my breath, but I shortened my stride and whispered, take what the hill offers and give what you can. The top wasn't so far away.

In Born To Run, Scott Jurek falls to the burning pavement in Death Valley about halfway through the 135-mile race. He's spent. He's lost. He can't go on. Lying there he thinks, there is no way he can finish, certainly no way he can win. Unless he got up as though he were starting completely fresh. Unless he ran like he never had before. Unless he got up and believed he could make the long run. He got up and won the race.

I kind of know how he felt. I'll keep running and see where I end up.