Friday Ramble 01/21/22

This week: Flirting with danger in pursuit of a goal, a follow-up thought about resilience, and a kale salad recipe that actually tastes good.

A few weeks ago in this space, I mentioned my quest to run a sub 6-minute mile. Had things gone according to plan, I would have carried the momentum from a killer mid-week workout into a triumphant blaze of glory a few days later. 

Then the snow came and ice settled over the land. After waiting a week for the conditions to improve, we made plans to move the mile to the following Sunday. That’s when a brutal cold front made an appearance, dropping temps down into the single digits backed by a mega wind (a meteorological term I just made up) to make it even worse. 

I spent a good portion of that Sunday staring at my running clothes trying to decide if it was worth it. On the one hand I really wanted to get this thing done, and on the other, it was seven degrees with wind gusts over 30 MPH. After much internal angst and literal gnashing of teeth, we called it off again. 

Finally, this past Wednesday, almost two weeks after the initial attempt was written into the schedule, there was an opening. Conditions were still far from ideal – a little too cold, a little too much wind – but if I kept waiting for the New England weather gods to smile on me in January, the right day might never come. 

And so, I headed off to a local track with my fastest shoes slung over my shoulder and butterflies in my stomach to try and do something I hadn’t done in over four years.