You’ve got your groove, and you’ve got your rut, and sometimes it’s hard to know the difference between the two. For a long stretch there, from September through all of October and into November, at least two-thirds of my runs were five to seven miles along a route that varied only slightly – even though every time I went out the door I told myself I ought to try something different. Turn right at that first intersection and see what happens, I said. But no, I zig-zagged through my neighborhood and past the coldly evocative Juvenile Justice Center, threw in a couple of long straightaways, then headed over noisy Interstate 84 to Rose City Park, where I joined the dog walkers and hooked in with a trail that winds around the front nine of the golf course. Then home over the Northeast 60thAvenue overpass. It was a nice mix of quiet streets and dirt, with a few short climbs, a very nice route, for sure. Some other runs would sneak into the picture, a Saturday or Sunday race, perhaps, and every ten days or so I’d pay a visit to my old friend Mount Tabor. Still, it was enough of a lack of variety that I began to wonder what was going on. I’d always had favorite routes, but I would run those routes weekly, not day after day. But here’s the thing: During this period, in the doing, those seemingly repetitive runs felt just right. I’m in a less predictable phase now, and from this new perspective I see that there had been a needed safety in the sameness of all those fall runs. I had been working myself back from an injury, working through a lot of things, and maybe they delivered the comfort of familiarity. Maybe amid the comings and goings of projects, part-time gigs, friends and more-than-friends, that same ol’ five-to-seven miler was a little daily gift of reassurance to myself, always welcoming me until it was time to go another direction.
