12.16.16

tomorrow i'll run my seventh and final race of the year, my third around roosevelt island. why roosevelt island, especially when the route never takes me past the smallpox hospital (the best part)? i like to think that racing there over and over is a good way to track my improvement (though i don't seem to be improving much; i need to pick things up if i'm to be a plausible team captain in april). i tell my friend A, a long-retired UN worker who volunteers with me at ye olde charity bookstore, that i'm guarding his apartment out there. "you picked a good day for it," he said this past week. "with the wind that whistles down along the river, it should feel a good ten to twenty degrees colder than it actually is." i'm fairly sure i forgot to throw away the frumpy, broken-zippered vest i bought for winter training a few years ago, and the loud thermal tights i ordered a month there finally showed up today. in your eye, polar vortex.

i read a few weeks ago that mick jagger runs eight miles a day when he's training for a tour. it never occurred to me to wonder what he's fleeing; i feel certain he's chasing someone.

Mick Jagger once boasted that 'I’d rather be dead than still singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty-five.' But now he’s over sixty and still singing 'Satisfaction.' Some people might find this funny, but not me. When he was young, Mick Jagger couldn’t imagine himself at forty-five. When I was young, I was the same. Can I laugh at Mick Jagger? No way. I just happen not to be a young rock singer. Nobody remembers what stupid things I might have said back then, so they’re not about to quote them back at me. That’s the only difference.

(haruki murakami, what i talk about when i talk about running)