Hello again 👋

It's been a little while, let's re-connect

One of the (many!) downtown streets we walked along in Charleston, S.C., during our vacation last week.

A few weeks ago, my 12-year-old’s cross country coach sent us an email with a training schedule, the running he’ll need to do to be ready when school starts back up in August.

The plan starts small, with runs of five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and the like. It includes some strength exercises too, like planks and push-ups. Nothing too hard, nothing too demanding.

It’s designed for someone starting at zero, essentially, so that by the time school starts they won’t still be at zero. And it gets slightly more challenging with each week, so the students can ease into the fall like a plane heading down the runway, just starting to pull its nose into the air.

To be honest, this plan easily could have been meant for me.

My own running and exercise — while not falling all the way to zero — has certainly not been where it once was. Not where it needs to be, not where it ought to be. There are (good!) reasons for that, but nonetheless — we are where we are.

Even though I’ve run here and there, I feel like I’m starting from scratch. Like I’ve gone all the way back to the beginning. Which, maybe is… okay?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve never really felt like the year started in January. To me, the year begins when we go back to school, or back to college for the fall semester. When those first leaves turn red, orange and brown, that’s always felt like the true beginning of the year to me.

I think that’s why summer always feels to me like the conclusion of something — and, once you hit about the point where we are now in July, things start turning again. Toward the fall, toward a new start.

It’s been a couple of weeks since we last connected, I know, and I’ve had lots of thoughts. Things have been churning in the back of my mind, as I’m sure they have for you too.

I want to re-dedicate myself to my health and fitness; especially after the beach vacation I’ve just been on, when I let myself be lazy and eat… whatever I wanted! (It was glorious, by the way!) That can only last so long, though. Sooner or later, we have to get back on the path.

One thing that’s never far from my mind is, I’m midway through my 55th year. I may have a little way left to go in my life, I may have a long way to go — or maybe even a really long way. (My hope, of course, is for the latter.)

But there’s something inescapable about being at roughly the half-way point of life: you keep thinking, “what comes next?” Especially once your children get older, or at least when they aren’t little anymore.

In his stand-up act years ago, Jerry Seinfeld has a great bit about what it’s like to be a kid:

When you’re little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up.

“Wait up! Hold up! Shut up! Mom, I’ll clean up! Just let me stay…up!”¹

That captures it so well, doesn’t it? When we’re young, we’re looking up, we’re looking forward, ahead to the adventure. Everything is about taking the next step up the ladder.

Now, though, I feel differently. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m not sure it’s up, necessarily. Is the right aim to stay where I am? To simply keep doing what I’m doing? Or is it to try to move forward, to break new ground?

Right now, I honestly don’t know. And maybe it’s okay not to have an answer, at least for the time being. But I do feel a stirring, for an answer I hope will come into view.

In the meantime, I’m going to put one foot in front of the other as I return to running — which won’t be easy, I know! But at least I have good company, all of you who get out there and do this too.

I’ll leave you with my favorite photo I took last week, a boat that had been converted into a Tiki bar, floating on a creek headed out to the Atlantic.

Keep in touch, and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

1. “Parents, of course, are just the opposite. Everything is down. ‘Calm down. Slow down. Come down here. Sit down. Put that… down!’”