A few weeks ago, I went jogging with a friend.
He’s that friend who decides to run his first marathon and then finishes it in 3:39.
He’s fast and tall and made in a factory that produces long distance runners.
Suffice it to say, I have a hard time keeping up with him, but it’s great because it forces me to run faster. (Pretty sure that iron sharpens iron verse applies to neighborhood jogging.)
Toward the end of the run, I was doing my best hold it together. He was still producing paragraphs of conversation, barely out of breath. I was just yelling single words like, “Sure!” or “Yeah!” or “Car!” I also had headphones in, adding a soft undercurrent of Explosions in the Sky to the run. I was thinking about a speech I was giving at Belmont the next night. And last but not least, I was trying to avoid packs of feral dogs. Not that I’ve seen any in our neighborhood, but I swear to you I saw some sort of jackal/coyote hybrid run into a drainage pipe at the library.
Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
Needless to say, during the run I was distracted. I was bent on moving forward, on keeping pace and not losing focus on what was in front of me. As we turned the last corner though, I saw a reflection on a sign ahead. I turned around for the briefest of moments and this is what I saw behind me.
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