Pace of things around

In the distant horizon was a bullock-cart rolling away. On the straight road this distance was over a kilometer. Pace was on my mind this evening – of things around, of me running and of Scott’s during Sparthathlon. I was trying to think what a pace of 7 min per mile takes after having done 130 miles of a 160 mile race. It is clearly beyond me at the moment.

A flock of parrots sped past flying low. I counted ten of them. It was a marvelous site when in their high speed flight the group which flew in formation of an arrow head, split every so swiftly, negotiating a neem tree ahead on their flight path. Then they grouped as easily, all the while maintaining their pace. What a sight, it was!

By this time I was closing in on the bullock cart. Almost all the men driving these carts are old. There is hardly a young man or woman that I have seen driving bullock carts in these several years that I have seen them in different regions. Is it that a cart’s pace can no longer hold the young? Almost all of them are on some form of automobile. Perhaps, only the old timers can be at ease and be okay to move at that pace of bullock-carts. By now, I had crossed the cart which was about a kilometer ahead of me on the straight road. In the next few minutes I cross two more of them.

I thought of my slowed down Grandpa because this week they tried a new bone implant in his leg and removed it, for his bones have gone too weak for this. A railway man, who once used to walk down the length of entire freight rakes of fifty-four wagons, everyday. At ninety, he is slowed such that several minutes pass before he manages to muster strength to put one foot ahead of the other. Life has slowed down phenomenally for him. These days, his children and grandchildren often run out of patience with his pace.

On the return lap, a high speed train sped through the landscape knifing that space where the green of fields met the blue of horizon. Again a thrilling sight, unlike any other in the world. May be I am a biased to these Indian landscapes. But even those Dutch trains, rolling across the scenic landscapes of Harlem, on ward to Rotterdam, didn’t  appear as lovely. There was something sterile about them. May be it is the thrill of locomotive horn from a distance and the anticipation that it builds up on the level crossings where people and traffic wait for the speeding train.

Different paces were noted in a magnified sense on this evening’s run. Paces registered with a heightened sense of awareness almost anew.

And then, I began fretting over Ladakh Marathon next month where I might not be able to sustain any respectable pace at 4500 meter altitude. Four weeks to go. Hope I manage to put in enough number of runs before that. To Ladakh this season!