distraction

I was feeling sluggish, thinking I would not run the sprint with vigor.  But when I began, I quickly came up to speed and flew along the broken pavement.  I finished with a time 2 seconds slower than last time.  As I ran, I saw a friend and his dog with his 5-month old twins in a stroller. Such a sighting is surely worth two seconds.  Just the trouble involved with recognizing a large wagon—that turned out to be the stroller—and then recognizing a friend, and the effort involved in saying ‘Hey” (even though I didn’t hear what I was saying—Shakira was screaming about African soccer in my ears) is plenty.  It took myself away from concentrating on moving the legs.
I saw the neighbor boy, 14-year-old Alexander, pulling up on his new high bar.  I wanted to try to throw my legs above the bar and to swing around. I first tried this move in 1992 in St. Petersburg when one of my students showed this maneuver.  At the beginning of the summer, I couldn’t do it, but by the end, I had improved my technique and strength to a sufficient degree that I was successful.  Today…again, success.  Oor-Rah!