Sarah Black's Blog: Book Report - Posts Tagged "exercise"

I take Oscar for a long, slow walk every morning on the Boise River Greenbelt. It’s dark at 0600, and really cold, and there are only a very few of us who are out every morning at that time. Besides me, there is the guy with the huskies. These two beautiful young huskies have green LED lights strapped to their heads, and when they come running down the greenbelt toward you in the dark, green lights bouncing wildly, for a moment you wonder if you’ve time-travelled into the middle of the Iditarod. Their owner is on a skateboard, and they are pulling him. I call him “The Lawyer.”

“The Bag Lady” is the elderly woman who is one of the group who take responsibility for picking up trash. She carries a plastic bag, gloves, a big flashlight, and has a phone in her ear. Whenever another person approaches, she starts talking, as if she is connected to a person at the other end of the phone. I think this is a good safety precaution if you’re 68 and are going to scour the Greenbelt for trash at 0600. She gives me a very brisk hello every morning and checks that Oscar is following regulations regarding the leash.

“The Holy Grail” is a bike commuter with a strobe light on his bike that could blind a person if they looked on it with both eyes wide open. I saw a picture once of the Holy Grail being lifted from the sands, and all the people standing around turned their eyes away, threw their arms up to shield their eyes from the bright light. That’s what I do when The Holy Grail comes around a corner unexpectedly and flashes me with his light as he zooms past.

So these three, and I (I imagine they call me “Scruffy and her dog”) are usually the Lone Rangers on the greenbelt. But since the holiday season has brought resolutions and cool new exercise gear, the morning greenbelt is becoming more crowded with joggers. I fear for them. As they jog past me, gasping for breath, faces flushed alarmingly, I can see they have the butts of people who sit at computers all day. I recognize this from my own mirror.

But they look very cool. Boise has a unique fashion sense. The men joggers are going for the old fashioned track suits, navy blue with a white stripe like Sue Sylvester, but with snow boots and mad bomber hats. The ladies are wearing black spandex, with spots of color like pink trim on their hats and matching shoelaces, and slashes of reflective material across thighs. I shudder to think what would happen to an onlooker if the Holy Grail were to light up these pieces of safety cloth.

But I’m happy to see people out trying to exercise. Even those of us whom only a kind person would call chubby are still out there trying, still not giving up. That’s the thing I love about people, they just do not give up. Even when it’s January and 16 degrees out, and their knees hurt and their backs are stiff, they climb out of bed and into their new Christmas gear and head out to the greenbelt to give it one more try.