Friday, 2/10

Because I have to head off to shoot the third-to-last episode (!) of “High School Bowl” for this season in a few minutes, I'm gonna leave you with something I wrote back in 2012. But because it involves the Fit Strip, the location that inspired the first two blogs of this week, I figure it's appropriate.

Have yourself a good few days, and don't worry. I don't plan on getting another black eye THIS weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

(originally posted February 23^rd, 2012)

The dreams have started again, right on schedule.

Every year for the past ten or so, I’ve had the same dream popping into my subconscious right around the same time of the year; namely, late February or early March. The dream is some variation on this--I’m running through Marquette’s Fit Strip, it’s warm out, and it’s green everywhere. Sometimes, there are variations on the dream, like I have to run up & down trees instead of up & down trails, or I sometimes find a lost “downtown” within the Fit Strip, but the dream always involves me running, heat, and green.

Every single time.

I’m in no way surprised; after all, during the summer, when it’s warm and everything’s green, part of my long meandering Saturday runs involve running around the Fit Strip several times before heading to other locations. It’s a great way to cool off just a little after running through the shimmering heat of downtown, and it’s amazing what going up & down those dirt hills do for your endurance (and your calf muscles). It’s one of the two parts of the run to which I look most forward.

Now because I can only run on the Fit Strip for 8 or so months a year, and because it’s only hot & green for two or three of those months, those times when it’s “perfect” are fleeting and few. So right around now, when it’s been six months since the conditions were “perfect”, I’m starting to miss it. I’m REALLY starting to miss it. And that, I’m guessing, is why the dreams always pop up right around this time of the year. It’s been cold and (usually) snowy; I’ve either stopped running for a bit in favor of skiing or like this year, have been forced to alter my running route to stay on plowed city streets. And while I often admit in here that I’m much more a creature of concrete than I am of the wilderness, there’s something about a little bit of nature in the middle of concrete--like Marquette’s Fit Strip--that makes venturing into it something special.

Especially when it’s hot & green, and I get to run up & down its hills.

That’s why I kinda like the dreams I have this time of the year, and that’s why I’d miss them if they didn’t show up on schedule. It’s my inside reminding my outside that the countdown has begun. That winter won’t last forever. And that, hopefully soon, I’ll be reunited with the heat and the green.

And with the Fit Strip.