When seven eight nine

Eight miles is much different than seven, or maybe that's the effect of having run the day before. Either way, at the end of it, I feel that same wobbly sensation as the spring. It's not in my head, necessarily, but in my entire body. The feeling that I could drift off at any moment. 

I run for time, not distance, and at fifty-seven minutes, I inexplicably began to run the way I would to finish a race. There were twenty-three minutes left. I don't know why, but I followed it. I followed myself over the roots with rapid steps like football players pummeling through tires in training and around this bend and that bend and it felt like it never really slowed, the feeling, until the clock hit twenty and I ran an extra ten seconds and stopped.

I steady myself with music. No, I am not ready to leave this world yet.