Day 3,994 —A little Less Weight—

 

         I put on my 10-pound vest today instead of 20, and it felt much lighter. You wouldn’t think 10 pounds would make such a huge difference, but it does. I feel bad for having a second week of not running a lot, but today marks the official two-week period before the race!!! Only two more weeks until the start of the 200-mile race, and I have been thinking about how I need to focus on being healthy right now and not running. I am feeling mostly okay, but I continue to not get the sleep I need, and there have been so many work- and school-related things that have kept me distracted. I bought some new shorts, socks, and shirts, so now I need to count everything and figure out if I have enough.

         I want to spend two weeks packing, so there will be no surprises when it comes to anything that I require in regard to supplies. My goal should be to have a list of what I want to bring by the end of next week, but my surgery is tomorrow, and that has been a distraction too. How long will it take to recover? Will it work? My doctor said I should have no movement restrictions, but I still imagine that it will take some time for the area to heal, so I am preparing myself for the worst. I will run first thing tomorrow before the surgery, and I have to go on a complete water and food fast starting tonight and going until the end of the surgery.

         I am going to drive myself in the morning, but it makes me wonder if I will have any place to put my keys, phone, and book, which I imagine I will bring in with me because I will have two hours after I get there before the surgery is supposed to take place.

 

I am sitting in front of the oldest man-made structure in St. Louis right now. It is called Sugarloaf Mound. It was created between 600 and 1300 C.E.

 

I was thinking I would run here someday, and maybe I still will, but it just happens to be next to 3 different schools that I work at, so I decided to drive over today and see it. There is no sign or any indication that this is a historical landmark. The last existing mound in St. Louis. Originally, there were at least 50 mounds, if I remember right, and to be clear, these are burial sites. Many of them were in where Forest Park is now but were removed during the World’s Fair of 1904. There are so many problematic things that happened during that fair, but we just seem to gloss over them. Also, almost all the older important landmarks in St. Louis are either not marked at all or are marked incredibly poorly. Isn’t it crazy how only certain parts of history are remembered and even those parts seem to change as each generation reinterprets their significance.