(Taken 21 June 2025, Robeson County, NC)
This is a picture I just took this morning, not because of anything particularly interesting in the frame but because of what I was doing and how I felt. I was finishing up a half-marathon for the first time in over 7 years.
I wasn't even feeling bad in this moment, mostly because I was running very slowly. I only average 11.5 minutes per mile, a snails pace compared to what I used to run and certainly much slower than most other half marathons I have run in the past. But this run was more of an exercise in heart rate control, pacing and relaxation. Yes, relaxation. Not necessarily physical relaxation but more mentally. It went pretty well; I averaged a 146bpm heart rate but towards the end I got a little excited and increased my pace a little too much to maintain under 150bpm. Running is somewhat of a love/hate relationship for me. More love than hate, but the Army has certainly made running feel like a chore at times than the release it usually is for me. But as a of recently I have decided to reclaim the love for running by committing myself to run a marathon; Also it helps that I am now again in a job within the Army where I can set my workouts every morning to whatever I want. (Brigade staff life has some perks I guess.)
My love for running, or maybe just the beginning of liking it, started early. Some of my earliest and fondest memories were my dad taking my twin brother and I to the local high school quarter mile track and timing us running a lap or two. We even had a rubber mat that my dad would carve out our record times in the dirt on to keep track. This was a regular occurrence for a few years when we lived in Spring, TX. The reward, at the time for me, was that after our timed run my dad would then allow my twin brother and I free reign of the area immediately surrounding the track: the bleachers, the pole-vault mats, the sand pits for the long jump, under the bleachers and even up the bleachers themselves.
My dad got to the point where he would give Jake (my twin) and I two options for running. Option 1) 1x400m sprint, short break and then 1x800m run. Option 2) 1x1600m run AKA the mile. I'll never forget my first mile, I think I was in the first grade, it was an 11 minute mile and way behind my dad and brother's mile time. I was not okay with this and from then on I only ran the mile option when we went. Along with this training our school had a run club where your could earn different colored plastic feet pendants to put on your shoes. You had to run during PE class or during recess, which I did a lot of. Eventually I could run 8 minute miles, which I thought was pretty decent given that I was a head shorter than most kids my age.
Anyhow, my running career only accelerated when in junior high/high school I started running the 2-mile (a race distance I am intimately familiar with now thanks to military service.). Despite hitting the gym and lifting the heavy circles at a competitive level, I was still pretty skinny and able to run. I never really trained for track season other than what we did for football and the occasional run up and down my dirt road in Iola, TX. I was just okay enough to make it out of district track meets and go to regionals where I would get stomped. 12:30 for a 2-mile race is not nearly quick enough! It probably didn't help that I would also run the 1-mile race at the track meets either; this meant I would be the second race (the mile) at the track meet to run and then the very last race to be run (the 2-mile). Most of the kids thought it was a crazy long distance to run and at the time I really couldn't imagine running any farther. Oh the wasted years.
The service has only stomped my knees into the pavement with forced cadence runs and probably running way too much. Often times what happens as well is a long field event or a school will put you out of running regularly for a few weeks and then you have a to just hop right back into it as if nothing happened. These sorts of cycles are common and frequent in the Army and I can't stand it, but that's the way it is. I am thankful now I can do what I want, most days, for PT from 0630-0800. It's only been 12 years to get to this point but here we are.
Long gone are the days where I wouldn't even blink at maxing out the Army 2-mile run for whatever flavor of physical fitness test we were taking; now I feel like I'm hoofing it just to get close to the 13:30 time. I am older, and quite a bit heavier than my running prime. Over the last year I went on a pretty hard bulk cycle, turned 30/31 and gained about 25 pounds. I remember after failing EFMB for my first time in June of 2014 I came back from Fort Stewart, GA feeling defeated and deflated at only 128lbs soaking wet. I now sit at 170 as of this morning and I have even lost a whole, verified, inch of height since 2014.
Despite the increase in age, weight and per mile times, running is still a great love of mine. This run past the corn fields was amazing. It was so foggy I could literally feel the moisture being inhaled through my nasal passages and weighing me down a little. I love the feeling of running down the middle of the narrow single-lane road, feeling as if for this short amount of time that I am the king of the road; only by way of mental claim and certainly not by might! Only a few cars passed me and everyone waved back today! Heck, one guy even honked at me and gave me a thumbs up all by himself! No dogs chased me either, which I mitigated by driving past what I call "woofin' dog's house". (A house that happens to be on the road I like to run, and the road I have to run to access my 6-mile loop route, that has a great pyrenes dog that hates my stinkin guts; another picture and 1,000 words in itself.) I don't use headphones, I run with my phone in my hand most days; today after a few miles I played some instrumental chill out music just to keep the positive thoughts flowing.
I saw many rabbits, countless birds, what I think was a fox and a dead king-snake on the road. I saw a lot of trash, purposely dumped, that made me pretty angry. Degenerates around here just can't afford trash service I guess. I saw many houses that were new and many more that were old. And I saw a lot fo corn. You can see in the picture how tall and dark it is, with it's little pollen covered stem thing at the top. The ears of corns are pushing out the little stringy bits as well. All signs of a great period of ample rain and intense sunshine for the last few months. I'll be a little sad to see the corn harvested and in the interim between crops looking at the foot tall dead stalks the harvester leaves behind.
But I will love to run by it nonetheless.
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