I finished a 6.7-mile leg of the Akron Marathon yesterday, the longest stretch of pavement and neighborhoods I’ve ever run. It felt great.
Around the 5.5-mile mark, I switched from a podcast to some music. My pace quickly picked up. In that time, as I rounded the bend onto the towpath and hustled toward the finish line (where fiancee and dog awaited), I got all hung up on two songs in particular. They seemed triumphant. One was “Never Too Late” by Michael Franti & Spearhead, and the other was “G Major” by Guster. The Guster song lies off the beaten path of the band’s repertoire, squatting unsuspectingly on a 2007 EP. It’s such a terrific song for running, apparently, and I kept it on a loop at the end of the relay—cycling through the uplifting moments a few times as I ran around Summit Lake on a gorgeous fall morning. The sense of accomplishment was pretty visceral at that point.
Sandy 