Gutsy Guava #3

As I left my house, at roughly 6:00, the feeling coursing through me could have been described as melancholy, like it always could when I went out on a run. By the time I was reaching mile 4, I had settled into the familiar groove of the route like a phonograph needle circling a favorite album. My feet hit the concrete in a rhythmic pattern that I was able to lose myself in, and lose myself I did for the next 10 miles, until I reached the coastline. Cresting the final hill in the outgoing direction, my vision swam and my blood burned in my veins like acid, sweat evaporating in the cool night air causing me to shiver, despite feeling quite hot. I dropped the pace, realizing that running any faster would burn me out before reaching home. I jogged along the highway and turned off into a parking lot above the beach, and stopped.

Beaches in this part of California are as far from the stereotypes you see on postcards as can be. Jagged rocks that waves constantly pound against, creating a constant state of mist that only heightened the chill of already cold air. Steep cliffs, that drop off to narrow bands of sand that barely pass for beaches at all. The entire thing is really quite dramatic, perfectly suited to deep philosophizing and hypothermia.

My breath formed billowing clouds of vapor in front of me as I panted, still feeling a burning sensation in my legs from the trip out. I had read the articles about lactic acid buildup, and the necessity of a proper cool down, but really didn’t care tonight. On wobbly legs I stood at the top of the staircase leading down to the shoreline. It was 92 steps long, 92 steps that I knew very well from hours of repeats. With a deep breath, I began down.

The first 10 steps were gone fast, and I felt strong
The burning sensation began at step 13, and I gritted my teeth
The burning turned to a searing at 20
The searing turned to a weak pulse at 26; the bodies rev limiter kicking in
The endorphins they talk about, the natural high must be on the way by now
But at step 34 it still burns, and my breath is beginning to become ragged and erratic
I began to slow down, sensing bile rising in my throat and a hot, prickly sensation creeping across my chest.

When I misstep
And my left ankle rolls over as though it’s straining to touch the ground
But there is no ground
Because that’s where the stairs end, and the hill that slopes down to the beach takes over.

I’m so exhausted that it seems oddly hilarious to be suddenly falling down the same hill I used the stairs to avoid, until I realize that it’s really steep. I have the obligatory flailing moment of terror before I hit the ground and roll down for a few feet in a small sandstorm, seeming to hit every hard thing on the way down. My face catches on a rock and I slide down to the beach, suddenly noticing how loud the waves are down here compared to up above. The searing sensation is back, only now it’s running across my face and forearms instead of my legs.

I ungrit my teeth
And take a breath
And inhale the mouthful of blood that I had carried down the hill
Supposedly humans can swallow a pint of blood before getting sick.

Which only provides a mild sort of condolence because a pint isn’t much when it’s 9 at night and you just fell down a hill 14 miles from your house, and have no means of contact with anyone who could help you. I twist my limbs and roll my neck, and everything seems to be working out okay, aside from soreness, scrapes, and a tweaked ankle. Mentally, I sigh. I would have physically sighed, but I was still panting. The burning, the heaving, the pain. All of it seemed so trivial as I sat there in the sand, alone for miles. The only important thing was the intensity I felt so clearly.

The waves that broke over the rocks seemed not to break, so much as fold over and dissolve into the sea and air. The sand was made of thousands of individual particles, all of them working together and yet against each other in order to support my weight. I felt light, and the pain and soreness melted away. It seemed, that for just a second, everything was perfect. Not in an overemotional, or even excessively pragmatic way. It simply was, and that was all that there was.

I still run, only now I know why. It isn’t my health, or the feeling, or superiority factors, nothing I can easily describe. It has the power to bring me back, and make things like pain or complexity fail to be significant. I hesitate to claim magic, but until it comes around, it’s probably the closest I can get.