Run Thoughts - #02: Sheering the Sheep of Coincidence
Setting the Scene:
Saturday the 1st, there was a few moving pieces happening at the same time. For myself, I ran most of the week with only Friday as my off day as opposed to the last few weeks of 4-5 days of running a week, so I only needed 5 miles today and around 14-15 miles on Sunday for 60 on the week. Ian, being almost 50, won’t run in the freezing morning temps anymore. Ian’s greyhound, Lucy, will stop to pee on a run/walk any chance she gets regardless of temperature (but not without her little coat because she has standards dammit).
It’s a given that I’ll be running on the South Recway for almost everything unless someone says otherwise, Ian’s go-to run spot is also on South Hill but more-so meandering in the trails between Six Mile Creek and the Recway. Lucy’s favorite run spot is anything within 1-2 miles of Ian’s house because she’ll get bored of anything longer; also South Hill.
Ian’s Reflection:
“Beautiful time to have been out there this afternoon. Pretty great running temperature, decent footing, sun punching through the forest and onto the face, for me time with Maren and Sherry on the run. The sequence of events were such a moment that makes you reflect on the greater connections in the world. The whole timing and connectedness on the day went exactly as it needed to. It was snowier than I'd expected, and I was wrapped into doing race work until 2am so getting out early was out of the cards. Kenny ran with Kelly so the plan was in flux. Maren wanted to run, Sherry joined for a bit of quality time, and we jumped into Maren's set workout of a certain distance and effort. We did a short out-and-back after her last on-effort and ran easy back home. Had we not done that, or decided to run back the upper portion to Coddington Rd, we would not have crossed paths with Josh, wherein, we stopped even for a moment to chat. In hindsight, this ended up part of being needed in the timing equation.”
“Sherry asked if I'd run Lucy around the block as she's hampered by lingering sickness. I decided to take a couple extra minutes to lay down a bit of snow melt, with the thought of it being a bit softened and easier to shovel after I returned. As Lucy and I left the driveway, a runner was headed down the hill. In my old man eyes I didn't register a resemblance from a distance. The mystery runner did and called out my name. It was indeed an old friend James McCowan in town for the meet at IC. His window to get out for a few miles at that specific time feels greater than a coincidence. His timing, my timing, the timing with Josh, the timing with Maren's run, the weather; it all had to coincide at that exact moment, otherwise he would have run by and we wouldn't have connected. Had Lucy not stopped to pee three times, had she not been dragging, had you not chosen to turn around, we wouldn't have connected by Juniper, and you never had connected with him, or taken him through the back half. So many variables in play, and so many could have derailed how it all shook out. With so much negativity, and so much bad in the world, that it makes you question things being connected in some way, or meant to be...yet, for that to have all shook out, sure seemed like it all was meant to be.”
The Skinny, TLDR:
To sum up the situation from my point of view incase that was hard to follow; I headed out for my easy 5 miles and bumped into Ian, Sherry (his wife), and Maren (his oldest daughter) a little bit before a mile into my run on the lower recway. After a brief wave and words, I headed off to the rest of my run. I turned at 2.5 and headed back the way I came. I make it back to the playground parking area and see Ian, Lucy and her coat, and one of Ian’s college competitors and now Vassar distance coach, James McCowan, who was in town for an indoor meet at Ithaca College (a meet I also ran it in college and remember well for being too anxious to wear my watch for splits for a mile and getting reamed out afterwards). Ian then out-sourced the task of trekking back to the meet to me via a short trail off of Coddington, and we shared a few minutes of getting to know each other and chatting about life and running. Really it was something incredibly lucky to have worked out how it did.
Lady Luck & Gentleman Gratitude:
For a longer conversation on luck and coincidences, I have a hard time not associating it to my current situation.
I was kind of fed up with running the semester before I graduated. I quit the team probably a week or two into winter break and worked at the local Dick’s the last few months of college. I graduated a year early despite the pretty abysmal last semester and didn’t go to the ceremony. Then I stayed in Cortland for the summer with maybe one run every so often and decided to cold-call the store asking if they needed summer help. It just so happens that a little after I called, the person Ian was going to hire had to head back to their home state indefinitely for a family health emergency and didn’t pan out. I got a second call not too long after and scheduled training shifts for August to September. Those close to the rotating store roster will also know this is around when Ellie Pell (long time Ithacan/Interlakian and cool person) moved to Boulder to pursue a new job, which also allowed me to take up the free hours in the schedule and focus on the store as a full-ish time job instead of the awkward 13 hour work days (plus the 40 minute commute both ways) I was doing with multiple side jobs to try and make money. However, through the increase in hours, I was able to save enough and move from Cortland to Ithaca that next spring by replying to a random room listing and moving in two weeks later. All quite lucky and just so happened to work out timing wise.
For those who read the last Run Thoughts blog post, I also met Mo in a similar way. Last summer I raced (mostly walked) Cayuga Trails 50k (another of Ian’s races), and laid in bed the next day for Lucifer’s Crossing; which Mo raced, came in 2nd overall, and set a new women’s course record. She then came into the store shortly after and was looking for a specific Salomon belt for her boyfriend, which I just so happened to buy two different sizes of a few months prior and had the size he wanted to try, so I talked her into buying the larger size and if it didn’t work I would just give her the smaller size for free after I brought it to the shop from my apartment. He didn’t end up needing it after all of that, but just that interaction led us to exchange numbers in the store and start running together.
From no real direction, to cold-calling the store and asking for a job, to enjoying running again, to all those other small things working out through some acts of will or mostly through what feels like sheer luck. Honestly, I don’t like to believe in things being related that closely because I know a lot of things that people associated are due to us giving them the association to find meaning in something that is meaningless, but gee this is a hard one to overlook.
