Another blisteringly cold morning with tons of wind and snow flurries. Today's forecast was to reach a high of about 25 degrees, which means that by the time I started running it had to be in the single digits. But, at least it was sunny! There were clouds in the sky but beautiful sunlight poked through all over. The lake looked completely still, an exquisite mixture of blues and grays. Closer to shore there were patches of crunchy ice and snow If I were in the Arctic I could imagine penguins drifting on them and waving "hello!" to me.On Friday night I called into our TNT hotline to check on any changes to our training schedule due to the weather. I called 3 different times because I was sure that practice would be canceled! I mean for goodness sakes it wasn't going to be more than a few degrees outside! However, practice was still to be.
At the beginning of practice one of the team leaders made a special announcement. Today, March 3rd, was Eddie's birthday. Had Eddie still been alive he would have been 16 years old. Wow, that really hit me as we got into our run. Here I was doubting that I could brave the cold for little more than an hour, and people like Eddie were struggling to stay alive. Every year Eddie's mother and family have a birthday party for him in celebration of his life. The fact that Eddie's birthday fell on my group training day meant something to me. The year I decide to run a marathon, Eddie's birthday falls on the same day I was having trouble finding the motivation to run out into the cold. Watching the horizon of Lake Michigan, I saw the world reach out into infinity and I was really glad to be out there on Eddie's birthday.
2 comments:
Eddie sounds like he made a big dent in people's lives at such a young age. When are the rest of us going to hear who he was?
hi...i was browsing the internet and just by chance decided to type in eddie velez and i stumbled upen your blog...my names sammy flores...im eddie's older cousin...irene is my moms sister...and i guess with his birthdu coming up again next week i was thinking of him and decided to look stuff up out of curiosity...i was 2 years older then eddie but he was my best friend every morning we would play hook(the peter pan movie)...and i guess around this time he always pops into my head because of the memorial or birthday party we have for him...which is this coming sunday by the way...and id really just like to thank you for what you do it means a whole lot especially when i see something like this...so thank you...my email address is plac4myhed@aol.com feel free to send me an email...im a college writer so maybe i could send you the poem i made for eddie about two years ago if you email me...thank you...keep it up....
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