Running like a leopard

Jack: What are your legs?
Archie: Springs. Steel springs.
Jack: What are they going to do?
Archie:  Hurl me down the track.
Jack:  How fast can you run?
Archie:  As fast as a leopard.
Jack:  How fast are you going to run?
Archie: As fast as a leopard!
Jack:  Then let's see you do it!
--Gallipoli (movie)

Seattle was sunny today, with temperatures in the high fifties.  Flowers and flowering trees were in bloom; spring was upon us.  And it was my birthday.  The signs were all auspicious.  I needed to run.  It's been two or three years since I last did any serious running, after an Achilles tendon strain in 2006 ended many years of regular running.

I had prepared for the arrival of this urge, and for this sort of spring day.  I had ordered new running shoes, which arrived Friday.  Today was the day for the test.

I'm no leopard.  It had been a while, as I say, since I'd run.  But I felt as leopard-like as I had any right to feel. Running fast, but not too fast.  Breathing hard, but not too hard.  Skimming through Interlaken Park, along a curvy lane that's closed to traffic in places, and infrequently trafficked in others.  Feeling feral.

Feral, perhaps, but not really feline.  No, rather than a leopard, I felt more like myself as a skinny pre-teen boy.  I always wore leather shoes to school -- not a school rule, but my mother's rule.  But, come summer vacation, we kids all got Keds.  Or some other brand of "tennis shoes."  We'd get 'em home, put 'em on, and run outside --  dancing across the lawns and sidewalks like wild maniacs.  The tennis shoes were like magic.  I felt I could run like the wind, jump like a gazelle. 

Frankly, I guess I really felt neither wind-like nor gazelle-like today.  Those years following the age of eleven have, in fact, taken something of a toll.  But everything's relative, right?  Compared to how I feel wearing my usual light hiking shoes, I felt light-footed as a ballet dancer. 

I've exhausted my fund of similes.  Let's just say that running in new running shoes is exhilarating.  It brings back those joys of being eleven years old at the very beginning of summer vacation -- joys that, in retrospect, are wasted on an eleven-year-old.

Now, I just have to remind myself every two or three days how good the run will feel once I start running.  If only my memories of today's run are strong enough to trump my usual inertia ...

Updates as events warrant.