Last Run

So this morning was the last run at our old house.

It is an odd thing, to gear up and go out and realize in the back of your mind that the likelihood that you will be running this course will be very small indeed.  Every passing footstep means that you are moving one step farther away from ever running this course again.

The flat straights and streets, the yards lit at night and various yard decorations which acquire fiendish appearances in the early morning darkness will disappear into the well of your memory.  The mileage that you have memorized so well - 3.2, 4.09, 5.16 - will not be calculated anymore.

You will find new course to run with their own mileage, their own fiendish appearances, their own decorations.  They will become the new reality of your run, and eventually you will come to know them as you have known these routes.

But what you will miss more than all is the last turn on the run.  It was this turn that meant that you had essentially achieved the distance you were going to run.  It was the sign that the last part of the run was going to begin, with home and coffee soon to follow.  In a sense that last turn has become the real last turn:  tomorrow and every day after this you will find that place no longer has any meaning outside of that time in your life.