Two Rivers Converge

"So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else."~Goethe

Today, for me two "rivers" converged...

This morning I placed a copy of last month's Running Times Magazine for reading later during the school day. When talking with my seventh graders about "good readers," I'll often remind them that a good reader always looks for connections, questions or clarification while attempting to comprehend a selection. Today during our daily Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) "class" following lunch (as part of our school's efforts to improve student literacy, we have student and staff use 25 minutes of their lunch to read silently to themselves with any type of literature--their choice), I myself made a connection from the magazine I had elected to read to my own experience, or inexperience, as this case would have it?"...

While I don't recall the actual title of the article in question, the author was writing about the need to make recovery runs (those slower tempo runs between moderate or high tempo training runs) true recovery runs. One of the suggestions he made is to put aside your pride and learn that it is okay to go slowly sometimes. Often when I start a run with the intention of pacing it as a recovery run, I feel too self conscious about moving so slowly and fear that others are watching me and judging me. My recoevry run then becomes a "regular" tempo run and the purpose of the intended run is lost.

Today, for me two rivers converged... my teaching and my running. The connection continued to reinforce the importance of finding meaning in what one is either assigned, or has independently chosen, to read.


Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!