Squealing tires: never something you want to hear as you’re about to step into an intersection. Luckily, in this case, I was still about ten strides away when the white low rider pickup raced around the corner from Sheridan onto 80th Street. “Jerk,” I muttered to myself before I looked down again at the sidewalk to watch for obstacles. My head snapped back up as I heard yet another set of tires taking the corner at speed - a squad car. “Oh hell yes,” I thought, watching the car speed after the pickup.

The driver of an SUV waiting at the light yelled, “Hell yeah! Get that crack dealer!” As I passed them in the crosswalk, I could hear 2 or 3 other guys in the truck cheering. One yelled “GO TREMPER” which totally puzzled me at first. Tremper is the high school for this part of town, and my shirt happened to be the same blue as the Trojan mascot. I couldn’t stop myself from yelling back, “Sorry, Bradford!” Bradford being the north side rival high school that Joy and I went to. “Whatever, it’s all good, whoo!” was the response.

Then I had a total mind flip as a realized that these guys had mistaken me for a high school student. My ten year reunion is this June, and I still can’t pass muster for an alomst-30-year-old in the general public. I thought about this as I ran on; how does 27-year-old me compare to 17-year-old me? Most of the overly philosophical ideas slipped out of my head faster than the sidewalk slipped under my feet, and that was what I focused on.

I ran track and cross country in high school. I wasn’t particularly exceptional at either, but I thought of myself as pretty athletic. For the last year and a half I’ve been training for the eventual BIG RACE and all this time I’ve been comparing myself to what I could do in 1996. Back then I could run a 5K in 19:03. Last fall, I felt a small sense of accomplishment when I ran it in 19:31. But tonight I realized something. There would be no competition between the two Eds. Sure, high school Ed might finish a short race a minute faster, but today Ed would dominate in anything more than three and a half miles.

I was so undisciplined then. If the weather was rainy, or cold, or hot, or no one was watching, my friends and I would run just out of view and then go to someone’s house, or go goof off in the woods. These days, it has to be colder than 15 degrees Farenheit (regardless of wind chill), or raining *and* more than a five mile run. I’m upset when I have to miss a run (though occasionally I relish the small injuries that force a recovery day).

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