(*Author’s note: this is a new feature on No Coast Bias, chronicling my attempts to reconnect to my once-favorite sport of long distance running. For the detailed explanation, click on this link. I will periodically be retracing my steps and going back to my first attempt at this running-running diary and this is the second ever post so I thought we could continue from here.)

Distance: 2.3 Miles

Location: 1/2 Mile on an indoor track, 1.8 Miles on a treadmill, Urban Active

Self-Loathing: (On a scale of 1-Vincent Van Gogh’s Blue Period): 3

Today I ran in a dark green Drake Relays shirt. I slip it over my head and am taken back. Back to when running was a joy. When I could float along at a pace that would instantly send me into cardiac arrest if I tried it now. When I sat in the stands, watching legends battering-ram down the gates of human endurance and believed that someday I could do the same.

Old running shirts mean different things to different runners.

They show where we’ve been. They are the flags of old races; roadmaps showing where we’ve triumphed or suffered mightily.

Each one is different.

Some muddy. Some bloody. Some adrenaline-injected, sublime victories, that we relive each time we slip our arms through and some, buried deeper in the pile, remind us of what could have been. They are battlescars with Hanes tags.

I slip on the shirt. The words are cracked. Faded.

I start out running on the indoor track. A blue-colored, 11-lap-to-a-mile loop. I know that the price I’ll pay in soreness is worth getting off the treadmill, if even for a few minutes. Whenever I run on flat ground my glaring inefficiencies as a runner come to the surface.

Legs that once lifted well, light and high like a 400 runner’s gait from my day’s spent under the tutelage of sprint coaches in summer track, have lost that knee-lift that used to belie some of the sprinting kick that resided underneath the distance runner tag.

I shamble past the windows and catch a fleeting reflection of myself. Cracked. Faded.

I finish up the half mile and find a treadmill. It’s in the far corner and facing the rising sun which shines in so directly, I can’t really keep my eyes fully open. Squinting, I fire up the machine. I feel good for the most part. With the sun shining so bright I can’t see the TV screen that the gym so conveniently supplies to each machine.

All I can see is the Drake Relays shirt. Bouncing. Bouncing.

All I can see is the reflected past, mirrored in the current moment. Bouncing. Bouncing.

About halfway through the shirt becomes soaked with sweat. Black splotches pool on the green shirt. The shirt clings to me, its reflection in the TV screen heaving up and down in time with my chest. Bouncing. Bouncing.

Cracked. Faded.

Step after step on the spinning rubber path goes according to plan and, after running for 1.8 miles I hop off, breathing heavily.

I bend down to stretch my hamstrings, reaching for the toes of my New Balances. One more day to cross off a list of many.

FIN