This footbridge is after six miles on an eight miler on the LoBo trail today. My form is still more of a shuffle than a run, but running outside in the Colorado springtime with 50° temps and full sunshine is priceless. I’m as happy as I look. I’m still living the same Saturdays as when I was seventeen running along Town Lake in Austin with my high school buddies. I wonder if any of them remember jumping off the I-35 bridge for a swim. Fortunately that was before cell phones so drivers couldn’t easily call the cops on us.

A better place to cool off around Town Lake was outside the dam on the north end of the Barton Springs pool. The 68° water poured out of the dam like a shower head and we’d take turns standing under it. I wonder if it still pours out like that. So many cool memories of running in Texas. Austin has the best urban running of any city in America, but I had some memorable runs in Round Rock and San Marcos too.

I recall running with my buddy Mike through some rancher’s fields off McNeil road. We kept passing cows and as we did, they’d fall in line behind us. Their numbers kept increasing and we felt like they were picking up speed. Eventually we had to make a decision to sprint for some exit or be trampled under a stampeding herd. I’d read somewhere that cows and horses wouldn’t trample you if you simply stopped and stood there. This was before the Internet, so my reading material was less suspect. It took me a while to convince Mike that this was our best option. It was less a matter of convincing him than knowing we’d already been nearly sprinting for too long and we were out of gas, and there were no quick exits. We stopped and turned to face the stampede. Those cows stopped on a dime, a few feet from our faces, and we slowly walked out of there.

Thinking of runs with Mike, he joined me for a summer semester at Texas State in San Marcos. Even though he hadn’t run competitively for a couple of years, he walked onto the University Cross Country team with me, setting the pace for our Monday half mile intervals, just like he’d done in high school. One morning we went for a fifteen miler on Post Road, toward Kyle and back. Just outside of town, we happened upon a dead body laying in the ditch. Mike actually ran past it for another 50 yards before noticing I had stopped. The poor boy had been walking from a trailer park home to his midnight shift stocking groceries when he was hit by a couple of drunk college boys. The boys turned themselves in shortly after. Having to roll over that boy’s bloodied body and confirm his death was one of the saddest things I’ve ever done.

Ran my first marathon with Mike too, in Dallas. I was sixteen in 1978. We drove around Dallas all night, drinking Schlitz beer we bought from the convenience store I conveniently worked at. Being so youthful, not sure I even noticed being hungover at the starting line. I still remember having to break through the crowd at fifteen miles to vomit behind a tree. Still, that was probably the fastest marathon I’ve ever run. I think we came in a tad bit over three hours.

So many runs, I could go on, but I need a shower after running 8 on the LoBo.