While running circles around my development in the peaceful quiet of 5am, I counted. Three times past my house would equal a mile. Three more circles, another mile. I'd do that 12 times this particular morning.
As I counted, I was struck by the similarity of this experience with the one I'd had swimming just the day before. In the pool, I usually swim 2000 yards. Some days a bit less, some days a bit more. Every day, I count my laps in 5's. 10 laps, 500 yards. 10 more, 1000. Do 20 more laps and I've hit my 2000. Back and forth, back and forth. I have a hard time keeping track of my swimming laps most days.
Funny, I rarely lose track of my running laps.
But then I started thinking about how my whole day is a lap. Wake up, go to work, go home from work, run/exercise (some days this happens before going to work), eat, bed. (And yes, there's showering, errands, and lots of other stuff in there on any given day, but you get my point!) Repeat that lap tomorrow. And the next day.
Even within my work my life is a series of laps. Monday through Friday, repeat. I'm a teacher, so September to June, summer break, repeat.
It's an intriguing concept to me -- this idea of a life of laps. Part of it sounds like I'm living on a hamster wheel, the other part sounds like there's an element of familiarity in my daily life and activites. Some days those laps feel tedious, other days those laps bring comfort.
Am I living on a track that I feel unable to step off of? Maybe at times. Not all the time. Sometimes not at all. Because even within those laps there are new experiences and new interactions and new people and new views.
Finish one lap, then turn around and run it in the other direction.
2 comments:
I find it interesting that you lose track of swimming laps but not running laps.... just sayin'....
Yeah! You blogged about this. How fun. And interesting. And true for most of us, in one way or another. It's the occasional kick-ass lap (in life and running) that makes it all worth it, huh?
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