When I finally made it back home, I turned on the Weather Channel to confirm how bad it was outside. The TV said it was 47 F, which ordinarily would’ve been wonderful for 8:00 AM Saturday morning in February, except that this morning the wind was blowing 20-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. As I stared at the television my ears were still ringing from the wind. It had been a brutal morning so far. It was the sort of wind that makes newly-arrived Yankees long for their snow shovels and icy roads and load up the minivan like Grapes of Wrath refugees and head north.
I ran about four miles; half of my run, the tailwind half, was really fast. The wind was pushing so hard on my back I could barely keep my body centered over my feet. I should’ve been running a marathon this morning since the wind would’ve blown all those skinny fast guys into the gutter and left the larger more stable runners like me to win the race.
The wind wasn’t a surprise. We’d listened to our back porch wind chimes clang all night long. I knew when I first woke up that it was too windy to run and I probably should have just rolled over and stayed in bed, but I didn’t. At least it wasn’t too hot or too cold or too early or too late. There are always plenty of reasons NOT to do something. This time, only one.
I’ll admit there may be a part of me that longs for the challenge of wind or heat or cold so I can prove I’m really a manly man. The 17th-Century French writer, Rochefoucauld, once wrote how “the wind blows out candles and kindles fires.� Sometimes I need to challenge the elements to know if I’ll be kindled like a fire, or blown out like a weak candle. And as far as personal testing goes, running in the wind isn’t the hardest to take.
However, manly man or not, I had to adjust my pace a little in the wind. It was more like a race walking gait since I was afraid if I ever had both feet off the ground at the same time I would blow away. I remember running in wind like this a couple of years ago only that day I was with Lady, the Running Labrador, who doesn’t care one way or the other about wind. She drug me straight down the street into the wind with me holding on to her leash and flapping around like a kite on a string. This morning I didn’t have Lady as an anchor, so I had to work to keep my footing.
Isaiah 17:13 says “Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters, when He rebukes them they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweed before a gale.� That’s right; I can roar and pose all I want, but I can’t turn down the wind. I become chaff, hurdling over the rolling tumbleweeds in a gale.
So Saturday morning as I ran through Kelly Park, I thought “at least I’m not playing baseball.� As I passed the Little League fields where two teams of young boys in uniforms were warming up … squinting in the wind, holding on to their caps, running laps around the outfield. The coaches were huddled around home plate with backs to the wind and hands stuffed in pockets and goofy grins that said they’d’ve already gone home if any women had been coaching but since it was all men no one wanted to be the first to chicken out. It’s hard work being a manly man.
Pablo Picasso claimed that “the older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it’s always in your face.â€? Well, maybe. But if you plan your route, you can avoid a constant headwind, and with experience you can utilize the wind breaks. And no matter how hard it gets there is the hot shower after you get home that makes it all worthwhile.
