HOURS
Raised in the shadow of apocalypse, I measured my childhood hours by the drumbeat of the approaching End of the World. The potential of life beyond my 16th year was unfathomable, the present moment ever-draped in doom. I learned to peel myself away from this countdown of the present moment, drifting off in memory or dreams of another world. When my cult’s doomsday ceased to materialize, I buried my fear of time’s passage in a twelve-year wave of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, free for fleeting seasons until the bottle was empty, until dawn came. In the half-light, my body logged with substances, I’d arrive home to drink myself to sleep, watching as runners, yawning and stretching, departed for dawn miles. 


Today, I’m ten weeks out from Boston, training through the wilds of winter in the “no man’s land” of the cycle. In these mysterious, quiet hours where progress feels murky, where packing it in makes as much sense as continuing forward, I watch myself dwelling on my lost years. I’m not alone in being haunted by thoughts of years past or to some “perfected” future self. I wonder how well I could have raced if I had not squandered my twenties. I wonder if I’ll ever have the “magical” training cycle...this time, or someday beyond. Yet, if allowed, these thoughts will measure time against me, dividing against my past and future.





































This is the potential of running: at the chirp of the watch, we drop fully into the present moment. We immerse with each breath, time becoming the wave that carries us forward on its crest. This frigid February dawn traces 22 miles for me on the bridges and greenways of New York City, a route that simulates the rolling hills from Hopkinton to Boylston. Once, I could only dream of what awaits--hours of presence on the pinprick of the moment, a darkness still carried inside but now transformed, glinting diamond-like deep within. In these hours, I am this progression through the past, forward