Why?

I'm gonna run 13.1 miles on Saturday. Likely in the rain. Why? Because it still sounds like fun.

Back in the tundra when I was putting my race calendar together, the gap looked long between January's Groundhog 5K and May's two triathlons. Of course, the Trolley Run is coming at the end of April, and that's a raging romp, 4 miles downhill.

But considering the leaps in endurance and strength I was seeing, a different kind of party called. And there it was: Rock the Parkway, 13.1 miles on the prettiest stretch of road in Kansas City.

To run through that vein of green! To mill and jostle and run amidst the bodies of 1300 other animals all aching with readiness! To let the mind go, completely, for more than two hours while the body suffuses, then jolts, with delicious chemical abandon... to feel that run.

My God. How can that not sound like fun? I want to run and run and run and not want to stop. I want that awareness of life that seems to evaporate the very flesh that conducts it. No boundaries between the animal and its life, no words that allow the disconnect.

And there it was, 13.1. Endurance. Proving ground for stamina. Launching pad. Party.

Maybe after I finish, it will mean more to me to say I finished a half marathon. I don't know why that itself should be a big deal. (Don't ever forget that it's a privilege of wealth, health, and luxury to race.)

What pleases me most is the confidence to look ahead on my calendar, point the fun sensors like a dowsing rod and say: Yes, it seems perfectly logical that I'll do this thing. Sign me up. The seeming attainability doesn't matter.

That translates in all directions, not just racing. I disregard limits when I focus — not on the point ahead, as with a goal, but on the line as it passes breathtakingly through that point.

On Saturday the line runs down soggy, green, beautiful Ward Parkway. It runs from my past through my heart and far beyond a finish line. And I so much want to see you out there running too.