The rain had intensified to "frog-choker" status, but this was merely a
passing mental note; the rain could be enjoyed more appropriately during
a later stage of the run.
The business at hand was making it up Dill.
There
was nothing out of the ordinary, save the pleasant sensation of rain
impacting, soaking, and dripping off. I guess most folks don't
understand, maybe even can't understand how enjoyable a run in the
pouring rain is. Truth be told, I don't really understand it; I simply
know it, but pondering who understands and even enjoys the oddities of
running would be more effectively pursued once back on level ground.
The business at hand was making it up Dill.
A
quick glance up, and the assessment made, neither good nor bad, that
about another 150 yards of the hill remained, and a car heading
downhill, headlights barely visible through the torrent, meant that I'd
need to veer over to one side or the other. The driver had a strange
expression looking at the drenched pedestrian, but soon enough she was
down, turned onto Owens, and but a distant memory, eclipsed by an
abnormal fascination with the way the water was dripping off the bill of
my hat almost at two exclusive points with approximately equal drip
rates, but the fluid mechanics properties of apparel could of course be
more closely examined later.
The business at hand was making it up Dill.
A
tight achilles, a rough heart-rate guesstimate, and an overall internal
status check relative to some ambiguous point 5 minutes prior (or was
that 45 minutes prior...?) were just a few of a thousand other fleeting
thoughts and moments on the way up Dill Street. In a paradoxically long blink of an eye, though, I turned left on Toll Gate, and the business of making it up Dill was done.
I couldn't help but reflect upon how counter-intuitively enjoyable
climbing up the hill had been, especially in the context of training,
and I briefly allowed my mind to go down the rabbit hole of
extrapolating an enjoyment of running up Dill Street to the rest of life...
...but ever so quickly,
the implications of the mere 1000 feet of Dill Street were, at least for
the remaining handful of miles, put on the backburner...
The business at hand was making it down Toll Gate...
