North Little Rock High

This exuded familiarity; I have been to the North Little Rock High track somewhere between 100 and 200 times since the summer of 1974 (when between the ninth and 10th grades ran a 5:30 mile there), and it seems like a bunch of those times felt like today; damp and cold and bright, with I-40's roar and a smell of bacon and sausage from the Waffle House saturating my runs and jogs and walks.

Today, according to no plan, just up from Rabbit at Rest's final pages, I drove to the track to go two miles with a few 100-meter sprints tossed in. I stretched a lot, jogged and walked two laps, and then did 100s down the backstretch for the next six laps, jogging and walking the other 300. It was the first time I have sprinted, landed on the balls of my feet, since our last softball game in the summer of 2007. These were far from dead sprints, buildups more like, where I'd run kind of fast, then faster, then at least simulate a sprint for the final 30 meters or so. I did the first in 27.6 seconds and the sprint portion felt awkward. That got better. By the final two or three they almost felt smooth. I forgot to time the second, but did the third in 25.6. It occurred to me that it would take a 22.5 to get the pace down to six minutes a mile, and did the final three in 25.4, 23.7, and 22.5 (actually 22.44; I round up to the nearest 10th if the 100th figure is higher than 0, as officials did in the days and nights of hand-held digital stopwatches at track meets). I covered the two miles in 23:03 and enjoyed every step.