i was on vacation in new england (rhode island and mass.), which consisted of: long porch-swing reading sessions, putting in about 75 miles of running, daily morning yoga, a little surfing in newport (board rentals were $25/hour — ick), and seeing lots of family toward the end of the week (mom’s 60th bday; cousin’s wedding on martha’s vineyard).

something i realized about new england is that it i’m pretty sure it turned into what the people who left old england were trying to escape: excessive judgment. i’d go out running and people would slow down their cars to stare at me, like i was some kinda two-headed calf or like maybe they hadn’t seen a 125lb heavily tattooed distance runner before? it was kinda lame. i always feel like if you’re gonna stare at me for that long, you better be saying hi or trying to fight, because otherwise i just get confused about what the hell you’re doing.

other than the slack-jawed small-town yokels, the trip was great. i feel relaxed and recentered. sitting alone for five days does me a lot of good.

and now i’m back running in my new neighborhood and you can tell that the runners are in a slight panic about the upcoming weather. seattle runners are not unlike squirrels, running extra miles to store them up for winter so that they feel like they don’t have to run in the rainy dark.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 7:32 am and is filed under running away. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.