#233 Dead Leaves Falling to the Ground

My college cross country team had an informal competition that started around this time every year: as we ran through the Midwestern fall, we tried to catch more falling leaves than anybody else. There weren't many rules required for this game. As long as you were out on a training run,  encountered a leaf that was falling without your help, and caught it before it hit the ground, you gained a point. This may seem like a strange game to you, dear reader, but when you're running dozens of miles each week, this sort of competition adds quite a bit of variety.

Sometimes the game was easy. You'd be running along on a day with a gentle breeze, and a leaf would practically drop into your palm. Other times the game was endlessly frustrating. The wind would pick up and blow the leaf past you or calm down and let the leaf drop just out of your reach. Or the leaf might dance unpredictably or swerve towards traffic, leaving you grasping empty air or leaping back to safety. And since we would be out running as a team, dropping back or veering off to chase a leaf meant you'd have to do extra work to catch back up, whether or not you made the catch.

I was thinking about this game while I ran on a breezy fall morning this past Saturday. My run quickly turned into the kind of run we dreamed of for this competition. After catching a single leaf early in the run, I snagged three more from a single tree that was upwind of me on the trail. Four leaves is an impressive haul when you're committed to staying on your path at your desired pace. And wouldn't you know it, those four leaves helped distract me a bit from the humidity and my waning energy. Sometimes a little diversion is all you need to get through the miles.

Grace and peace,

BMH