Today. 5 Miles on the work treadmill staring at the white cinderblock wall and occasionally gazing at one of those little inspirational corporate posters that sit now plastered on some office wall in every office building within a 5 mile radius of each other across all 48 contiguous states creating a cheesy web of artistically-crafted sailboats or stormy seas or rock climbers or some other quaint picture with one word headers such as "Customer Service." Mine, just slightly to the right of the treadmill within the peripheral vision of any dreadmill daydream, was "Perseverance." Perseverance. The picture of 'Perseverance' painted for me by the poor marketing Vice President with the Manhattan penthouse who persevered to hail the next cab in the rainstorm on the way back from Ferragamos while keeping the Frankenstein lock on her Chloe Paddington bag dry, is some rubbed-down, oiled runner wearing brand new 'running' clothing complete with spandex, fake sweat, brand new running shoes and a sporting a conjured look of intensity, running up a perfectly manicured grass field in the shape of an isosceles triangle straight out of a GMAT study guide. Perseverance. I jump off the tread at 5 miles after doing them at or about 7:40 and do the last 200m at that elusive 10.6 mph pace. I walk out of the gym door and run into a blind man and his guide dog as they feel their way down the hall. I go into the snack/gift shop and watch the very old man with the first stages of Parkinson's and still forced to work, spend 2 minutes trying to pry the plastic bag open so he can put the bereavement card for his recently departed brother-in-law into the sack. He embarrassingly shakes his head at all of us as we watch and wait one, typically-too-long second to offer our help; it's too late. He opens the sack, shoves the letter in, shakes his head again, and ambles out the door to go back to pissing his golden years away behind that gray cubicle wall with the red pushpins that may be his last view when he reaches for his heart and wishes that he had persevered somewhere else. Of all the crosses that get thrown onto people, of all the stumbles, falls, trips...of all the weight of the sickly-smelling cedar beams and the sting of the rusted barb at the end of the centurion's whip as it slowly pulls and tugs at us....of all the children in the cancer wards with the shaved heads holding the teddy bears that will help them along their unjust walk and the people sitting in doctor's rooms at this very minute with their head in their hands, alone, hearing the results of the CAT scan or the MRI or the AIDS test contemplating the dusty hill with the gauntlet of the laughing, the spitting, the ignoring, and the mocking....the picture we get for all this is that antiseptic runner on that cinderblock wall with the new shoes charging up the perfect slope of an ideal Calvary. Perseverance. ------- Yesterday. 3.5 miles in 30 minutes on the dread. Extremely sore. Calves sore. Left leg IT band soreness over the top of the knee. Beat to hell basically. ------------ Erin, thanks for the link...this one's worth posting out there for all to see. My favorite is 'Discovery'