Lucky.

I leave today!  Woo hoo!  I am packed and ready for the adventure to start.  Thank you for all of your support and encouragement.  If you'd like, you can email me at akfreeland@me.com - I should be able to get it!

I feel so loved and supported. More on this later, but thank you for the calls, emails, runs and more runs, knitting, singing, reading my work...  Lady Luck is a good friend of mine but you guys trump even the best luck!  All my love- AK

Here is a prose poem generated in my writing group a few weeks ago that I thought you'd enjoy as I fly.

Lucky.

I have been meaning to tell you, I am lucky. I am not having a nervous breakdown.  I am not going to South Africa to look for myself, or run away from who I am, or get away from it all.  I know it is not the vacation itinerary planned by most around here. Running 56 miles may not sound like a lucky break.  I have heard “I go that far in my car, I run if I am being chased” So you may call it punishment, I call it lucky.

I see that you think it odd for me to go alone.  You even need explain that you could never be away from your kids so long.  Well, what you need to know is that I am lucky.  I can.  Truth be told, I do not want to be apart from them for that long.  Not because I am worried about them, but because I would love to hear their observations. I am lucky that my family does not skip a big beat when I am gone.  They will have the Potty Talk Perfection Tour 2011 and want to see me, but they know I am coming home soon with hugs and kisses overflowing out of my bag.

But still, you ask, aren’t you afraid to go alone?  I tell you, a little, but truth be told, I am not.  I will be careful, I know rules are different.  But the eyes I will see there are the eyes of people, like you and me.  People can smell it when you are afraid of them.  Well, on me they will smell Chanel no.5 or maybe sweat, because I am not afraid, I am lucky.  I’ll meet friends.  They may or may not know what I am saying, but when I laugh they get it.  And when they smile, I get it.  And when we have dinner, these friends and I, they will know that I am worried about what to order not because of the fit of a dress, but because of how it will feel at mile 40.  They will be worried too.  And they will think about about how clear their pee should be the day before.  And if they have trained enough, and what to say to the beast when, not if, it appears. They will understand when I say, I might have a blister, not to get a band aid, but a lancet and moleskin. And, when I say I don’t think I can make it, they will say you will.

And they will know, without a word, that it is time for us all to go to our beds.  And they will know how much I think about my boys when I am running. And that my secret to training is to tell my boys how far I am going to run, then they ask if I made it when I get home. They know that love does not preclude adventure, it generates it, even solo. Still you ask, why?  I do it because my friends are expecting me.  Yes, the same friends I haven’t yet met.