Halfway through the Tussey Mountainback 2004 50 miler I pause near a mountain lake to change socks and slip into a dry shirt. I don one of my favorite nylon mesh tops, found at a thrift store and bearing the name of a baseball team that I can identify with as it struggles, often loses, and yet perseveres in good humor.

Johnny Damon, Boston Red Sox outfielder, recently found the perfect words for the perfect feeling that arrives when one is perfectly focused on a perfectly impossible task:

"It doesn't weigh on our minds. There's not much that weighs on our minds. We're not too smart."

(quotation, slightly edited for grammar, from "Red Sox, Schilling Are Feeling Blue" by Jorge Arangure Jr., Washington Post, 15 Oct 2004; photo taken by a kind Tussey Mountainback volunteer at the Penn Roosevelt camping area just before mile 26; see also LightMind (22 Aug 2002), BovineMind (9 Jul 2003), DeadBrainCellTheory (6 Apr 2004), BaseballLibraryFan (29 Sep 2004), ...)

TopicRecreation - TopicRunning - TopicMind - TopicPersonalHistory - TopicHumor - 2004-10-19

Comment 21 Oct 2004^ at 02:12Z

Cool classic BoSox tee. You aren't planning on a Central Park run any time soon, I hope.

(correlates: SuboptimalPerformance, RootingForTheYankees, BaseballLibraryFan, ...)