Memory Lane

If you asked me to tell you about my run on, say, Tuesday of this week, I couldn’t do it. I would first have to check out the Strava record and the data on the Coros app. And then with those crutches, I could limp through a plot summary of where I went and how I did. But I don’t believe that I have retained any particular memory of that run.

My run-memory works like a janky old VHS tape which is used to record overnight security-cam footage and then gets wiped clean every morning to be re-used the following night. Except my tape doesn’t always get wiped completely clean. Once in a while, some tiny moment is preserved. And then for no particular reason it flashes out from the void. Often when I’m out on a run!

Some moments are mundane, some are wild. Like a hilariously slippery jog one winter morning in Brooklyn when I was absolutely alone and falling all over the place out on the middle of the Williamsburg bridge path during a sleet storm. Or the random time I paused for a few minutes to enjoy the shade of a parking lot wall on Morgan Ave during a hot one a few summers ago. Or that steamy Cincy summer night when I was thirteen and running in the dark because I was embarrassed about doing something so silly in public and didn’t want to be seen. Or how drained and horrible I felt that one time at around mile 20 on a Connecticut trail marathon years back after my friend had left me for dead (at my encouragement) and I was making my way through a grisly stretch of storm-downed trees.

I cherish these bright memory shards, which bring back moments of joy and discomfort in fine detail. Maybe I like them even more because it seems like whatever system my brain is using to catalog this stuff couldn’t be more random, and I never know what’s going to pop up next.