Daydreaming

For me, the first 1-2 kilometers of running are a battle to warm up and settle down. Every sensible bone I have (and my lungs) demands that I stop the insanity and go back to bed, because that's what you do at 630-ish AM, especially on weekends.

I keep running of course, because it'd be embarrassing to turn back so soon and because Enfant Terrible and our brother in law have pulled ahead and I don't want to run too far behind in the dark.

I really should get one of those LED safety clip-on blinking lights.

Before I realize it, I'm not thinking about how stupidly hard it is to run anymore, but other things, like the blinky light. And oh, here's a wee dead mouse. There's a person wearing a blinky light coming from the opposite direction. Usually, it's a white guy, and we exchange smiles and nods.

It's not that I run in a cocoon. I feel the road under my shoes, and I pretend that I'm in the Cormac McCarthy story, the one where Aragorn takes a long, depressing road trip. A creature in the tree cries out; alarmed, or a warning to others?

On another route, I make it a (sad) game of avoiding the inevitable dog turds, occasional shards of glass, and suspicious clumps. I trod on a flyblown rat once.

Elsewhere, we run past a copse of rubber trees and the smell of something rotting wafts out.

Over time, I'm sure we'll remember which parts of the hedge are used as pissoirs by the guards at the golf course (srsly, where else can they go?).

Everything ends eventually, naturally. The sun comes up, we take the return route back, and our attention is drawn inwards, just putting one foot in front of the other without stopping.

Also, there will be roti canai.