A Connection Missed

Me: driving the old school silver Corolla on Overland at 11pm last Friday night.  I just had vegetarian Pho with a mock chicken appetizer and a glass of Chardonnay.  The expression on my face was a combination of happily sate and overly tired from being up two hours past my bedtime.

You: wearing a loose red tank top, dark shorts, and white headphones, running along Palms and turning left onto Overland.  You first ran in front of my car as I stopped at the light and then paused on the corner next to me while we both waited to cross the intersection.  You continued to bob up and down while I stared at you without your notice.

I wanted to call out to you, Nightrunner, and ask what brings a man to this – running in a suspect neighborhood in the middle of the night?  Is your commitment to fitness so carved in granite that you steal out for a jaunt at lunch during your graveyard shift?  Ah, but your spongy core and lack of tone betrays.  Is your life so full helping the poor and downtrodden that you can’t but sneak in a run in the light of day?  Underneath the dark circles and patchy scruff, you do have the face of a giver.

Perhaps you are saving your alabaster skin from the cruel effects of the sun, a particular cross to bear for persons whose heritage yields from a Nordic clime?  Your exposed flesh was a benefit for us drivers as your white arms and legs cut through the dim.  Are you conditioning yourself for a move to Alaska during their twenty-four hours of darkness?  Are you competing in an urban ultra-marathon of one?  Did your wife demand milk for the baby in the middle of the night and you figured why not kill two birds?  What is it that drives you?  What?

I run in the day and it saddens me that our paths might never cross.  You are a man of mystery, an urban warrior who does not let time nor darkness nor lack of sleep prohibit you from a life of fitness and improved cardiac health.  I envy your overfull social calendar and applaud your commitment.  Yes is the answer, and you know that for sure.

You go, Nightrunner, go forth into the dark and prosper!