Still Chasing the Dream

I come from a fairly large close-knit family of six kids. As we got older and started to move out of the house, my mom, most likely in an effort to thwart off the effects of the empty-nest-syndrome, designated Tuesday as Family Dinner Night. In laymen's terms, that means that every Tuesday night, my mom cooks dinner, and whoever wants to come over and eat it is welcome. She always gets a few people every week and my wife and I try to make it as often possible. Last night was my God Daughter's birthday celebration so of course, we just had to be there.

Now I never pass up the opportunity to sleep a little later in the morning if I can swing it. Truth is, most days, I just can't swing it. I have to get up and run in the morning or it just doesn't happen. However, on Tuesday Night Dinner day, I have the option of running part of the way to my parents house, since I take the train into work and have to take the train out to their house as well. Last night, I decided to just run the whole way. From Downtown Chicago where I work to my parents house, in the leafy suburbs of Chicago, is about 19 miles. Some of it is through the urban jungle, some of it is through scary neighborhoods, and some of it is through multi-million dollar home neighborhoods. However, all of it is done on Washington Blvd. My parents live on Washington and my work is two blocks south of Washington in the city. So I just strap on the shoes, point myself west, and go.

Last nights run was kind of tough. It was raining and extremely humid in the late afternoon when I was out there. Since most of the bad neighborhoods that I have to run through all come in the first 10 miles or so of the run, the rain was somewhat welcome. It keeps the hecklers off the street. However, getting drenched to the bone in the first few miles of a 19 miler is not fun. At all. The blisters started forming on my pruned up feet somewhere around mile 12 and were really bugging me for the last 4 miles. Luckily, today they seem to be back to normal so no real damage was done.

However, my favorite part of this particular run is when I get to run through the towns that I grew up in. From about mile 14-16 is what used to be my playground (did I really just use a Madonna song in my blog?). I spent my Kindergarten years right through my Junior year in highschool in that area and very little has changed since then. Sure some of the names on the buildings have changed, but for the most part, it's the same place.

At one point, I came up on my best friend from grade school's house. I spent a lot of days at that house. I have no idea if he still lives there or not. Last I checked about five years ago, he was. As I passed the library that just so happened to be right across the street from where he lived, I remember how we used to run over there when his mom would let us cross the busy street and goof around on the computer that they had there.

Now the computer games in 1987 were quite a bit different than the computer games today. We were pretty much computer geniuses at 11 years old. Most of the time, we would spend our time writing stupid little programs that would display the pixels in different colors so we could draw a smiley face. Or maybe write a little looping program that would write "Greg is Great!!" over and over again on the screen.

However, one thing that I do remember doing is taking a brand new floppy disk and, after properly formatting it and punching a whole in one side of it so we could make it a double-sided disk, writing down what me and Hugh wanted to be when we grew up. I think he said he wanted to be Wilt Chamberlain and I know I said I wanted to be Jesse Owens. At the time I don't think I realized that Jesse Owens was a sprinter. All I knew was the he could run really really fast. That's what I wanted to do.

Eventually, I'm sure the disk was lost or reformatted and used for more worthy pursuits, but I still remember writing it. Hugh, who was about 6'4 in 8th grade, went onto play high school basketball, but that was about the end of the line for his basketball dreams. I ran track and cross-country in high school, but by my senior year, the desire to compete had fizzled and I had given up as well. However, after college graduation I slowly started back at the running thing and now can't imagine life without it.

What struck me about all this is that what I had written as a 7th grader is still driving me today. Here I am some 20+ years after writing that I wanted to be Jesse Owens when I grow up, and I am still chasing that dream, even though I'm all grown up. Well, I'm not trying to be Jesse Owens anymore, but I am still trying to find out how fast I can be. Sure the distances have changed and the expectations aren't quite as high as they used to be, but the dream hasn't changed. I still want to be fast. After all these years.