Good morning. The morning is frosty, but it has the air of a day that will warm up to tolerable. Rain is supposed to be on the way and you can sort feel a little bit of the dampness in the air, but over all it isn’t too bad. At least i haven’t gotten the ‘weather is changing’ headache that generally accompanies a shift. Which is nice. So what we are feeling nice and not too sleepy and the coffee pot is beginning it’s brewing, why don’t we knock out our morning prompt? As always it is a timer set for fifteen minutes, no stopping until we hear the timer ding. That means no going back to edit or overthink anything. Just one word after the other until the fifteen is done. Ready? Excellent. Let’s go.
I kind of like this one. I am not sure where the story is going exactly, but I like the character. I think even if I pulled him out of this potential tale he would be good elsewhere. Admittedly now I want to find out who he is hiding from. So there’s that.
Thursday, February 10th: They stretched before beginning their run.
They stretched before beginning their run. It was a necessary precaution to prevent injury but Sean always found something satisfying in the ritual of limbering up his muscles. There was something that felt viscerally good about the stretching and bending. He liked to think of it as working the kinks out of his body. He envisioned it less as the loosening of his muscles and more of the releasing of the days small annoyances. A twist to the side and away floated the annoying call with the pushy sales rep. A stretch of the leg and the tersely worded disagreement with Janet drifted off.
All of the day was stretched out and forgotten. The thing with Kevin still sat in the back of his mind, knowing it was something he would have to deal with when he left, but the annoyance of having to deal with it left him and Sean knew that after his run, he would be able to sort through it with less emotional angst and possibly come up with a solution. That worked for all of them.
Once limbered he looked at the others in his running group. They were a mixed bag, thrown together by a mix of desire and ability. All of them desired to run the upcoming marathon and were training accordingly. They were placed in this group due to their running ability. Everyone training was portioned out into groups based on their speed on the course.
Sean smiled. From what he could tell he had nothing in common with anyone in the group other than the twin pulls of desire and ability. Admittedly there hadn’t been much room for talking. They all showed up in their running gear, did their stretching and began to run. There was no small talk, just basic nods of greeting.
‘I suppose that means I could in theory have loads in common with each of them,’ he decided as their stretching came to an end and they began to run.
Truthfully, Sean didn’t really like running. However since the car wreck he found that routine exercise such as this kept his now healed limbs limber. He settled on running because there was always a group training for some marathon or other and he could slip in and be one of the pack. Standing out was not a good idea, not for him. Not since everyone thought he died in the accident.
In general Sean avoided any televised marathons. He didn’t want to be caught on camera. If he did run a marathon where portions were televised, he did his best to keep his head down and remain in the center of the pack.
Often Sean tried talking himself out of marathons and frequently claimed an injury on the day of the run if he felt it necessary. He tried working out in gyms but hated the sterile environment of it. He hated the machines. They reminded him of things best left forgotten. Running was something he was much more comfortable with.
His group started slow on this first leg of their course and gradually increased to their full running speed. Sean spotted the car parked on the street on the other side of the fence separating the park where they ran from the rest of the world. It had been parked there yesterday too.
Ten til Midnight 