Post by Chris Lowry

I almost started making a confession About me and what I believe Sometimes my actions betray my thoughts Because I can be a contradiction It’s in our natures I guess you can say I’m an entertainer at heart Or at least I’ve always wanted to be I’m hardly every the smartest guy in the room And despite my athletic endeavors, it’s rarely recognized that I’ve seen… things, done things, been around things Stacked experience upon experience and gave thought to what “it all” means Sometimes staring at a satellite blinking in the nighttime sky and call it a star just so I can make a wish OR make a wish come true I thought about that this morning Wishes And how to make them a reality And it made me mad Because… Every day but 3 in the month of June, I’ve run 7 miles or more Up at 5:30- and out the door by 5:40 The same loop most days My wish is to run a 100 mile ultra in Dec in Florida under 20 hours As a 56 year old man, I’d be plopped into the senior category by default I think it’s to prove something to myself That if I can just do this hard thing, people will… like me? respect me? care about me? But those are things I don’t care about (I think- this is another thougth I wrestle with on long runs) The wishing into action part is me getting mad about it About the state of my business, the state of the world, the state of this city in this state And most of all, my state of mind Mad when chemicals and hormones and dehydration carves away all those weak excuses and bullshit I use to build up walls I call an identity And I’m left with… Me. Mistakes and misteps and misunderstandings Possibly a tinge of madness because I’ve had grand ambition my whole life Running up that hill again and again and again, physically and metaphorically And running into walls I didn’t build that we call rules And running into self imposed limitations because of things people say And it seems, sometimes, that the only way to deal with what’s left after all the excuses and little white lies we tell ourselves are gone Is to find out what the rules are AND BREAK EVERY F*CKING ONE OF THEM Because tribes have rules like laws to keep people safe But society (peers) make rules so that YOU stay quiet, stay normal and don’t bother anybody Stay in your lane Keep your opinion to yourself Don’t act up, or act out or my favorite Get along to get along Which seems to me a denial of sorts An effort to stay small so that the people around you will “like” you and want to be with you Until you realize, 5 miles in on a sunrise run, that you’re all alone And it’s just you steering this meat sac to whatever comes next You can follow the rules and stay the same Or you can line ‘em up and knock ‘em down and ignore every single one of them Except speeding Because speed kills, so slow down while driving, The rest, you can take or leave Just like my plan going forward I’m mis-quoting N.W.A. here when I say, “F- the Rules.”