What am I doing, and Why am I not better at it?

I caught all the lights tonight. I stopped once, and that was voluntary to go to the bathroom for 30 seconds on a tree.

I ran late, starting my run at 9:15pm. DC is humid, and my runs have been getting later and later as the summer drags onward. Each mile peeled away like magnetic strips, revealing the run as a whole. Each mile was between 6:22 and 6:27, a 5 second gap for 7.75 miles.

My pace hardly faltered at any time. I glided, and got intentionally lost in my own head.

I didn't want to run today. I didn't get much sleep last night, and I had to work later than most people at my office. I was buzzing on coffee all day and when I got home and made and ate dinner, it was 8:30. I wanted to crash, to sleep, to pass out for 12 hours and wake up ready to go tomorrow.

And I almost did. I laid in my bed, and I knew I couldn't fall asleep unless I got my run in. It wasn't guilt, it wasn't anxiousness, it was the feeling of an uncompleted task that simply had to be taken care of before bed. Like washing dishes, or making lunch for the next day.

Or homework. It was homework. It simply had to be done.

If I had to describe to you why I've come to feel like that, I couldn't tell you. There's something I'm running for, running towards, and I think that deep down I know what it is, but it's too frightening to say out loud. Too surreal to think about in my current state of fitness.

I listen to soft music that acts as white noise, blocking out the inner city sounds. It doesn't pump me up & it doesn't calm me down, it simply changes what I am experiencing. Recently, it's been folk music. Before that, it was classic orchestral pieces. Before that, Indie rock. It changes as I change.

I think I do it to mute the sound of my own breathing.

I don't like to know how tired I am, and the sound of my labored breath bothers me in the fleeting moments between songs. I'm not supposed to be tired at a silly pace like this. I'm fine.

I keep my pace as I climb, climb, climb back home. As I slow to a stop at the end of my run, I check my heart rate. It's just north of 170 bpm.

I probably checked it wrong, I'm fitter than that. Ya. I'm fitter than that.

If I were to measure myself against what I want to do, what I know I'm running for, what makes running another task rather than a chore or a burden or even something I view as necessary exercise - would stop me. It's too intangible, too hard, too few success stories and millions of failures of people just like me.

I don't have a closing motivational thought. These thoughts just bounce around my head to the sound of White Blank Page as I skim through the humid night, physically knowing that I can when all evidence says I cannot.