Running Beyond Empty by Ben Kruser

Author:Ben Kruser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: friends, family, motherdaughter, sports, running, new york state, catskill mountains
Publisher: Petra Books

Mile 19

A New Course

The last week of June was a full calendar for Dinah and Selah. Selah’s adult education course started on Tuesday and continued again on Thursday evening. Dinah had the last summer school staff training sessions planned for that week and the Nature Center Advisory Committee meeting was on Friday.

“How’s Norm’s track running going Selah?” asked Dinah while they were getting ready that Tuesday morning.

“Really good. We started with running 400 meter sets. Norm came up with an idea of playing tag. One person would be ‘it’ and has one lap to get away. Norm is staying ahead of me about 70% of the time now. He said it was like running fartleks.”

“Fartleks?” said Dinah.

“Yeah. Sounds gross, but it’s Swedish for speed play. Experienced runners use it all the time to improve their pace. Why are you taking a big bag of my frozen cookies out of the freezer?”

“Oh, I just had a brain fart and thought Bill would like some. They’ve been sitting there for awhile. Hate to see them go to waste.”

It wasn’t long before Norm arrived as usual and whisked Selah away to the High School track. Dinah cleaned up the kitchen and packed her backpack. With a big bag of frozen humble cookies in her hand, she left for the Reserve.

“Wow, what’s the occasion?” grinned Bill as he gingerly poked inside the brown grocery bag that Dinah had handed him.

“Oh, nothing special. Just a thank you for helping me with all my running.”

“Raisin cookies. I’ll have to be careful. Don’t want to gas you out.”

Would serve me right blushed Dinah.

After a pleasant run together, Dinah got cleaned up and headed off to the Nature Center. The last of the summer school staff were due to arrive. Dinah planned a morning of reviewing grade school level lesson plans for pond ecology, tree activities and other fun ideas that the staff had suggested trying. Dinah went into the spare office that she had been using, but for the life of her couldn’t find her notebook. She turned the office upside down with no luck. When she took a moment to use the washroom, she found her notebook stuffed into the garbage pail full of dirty, used paper towels.

Dinah picked out her notebook, wiped it off and walked calmly down the hall into the activity room. The nature tour guides were all slouched around a table, sipping their coffee and giggling under their breaths like seven-year-old princesses trying not to smile at their sick inside joke.

Dinah stared at the group as they tried their best to pretend she wasn’t there. Dinah strolled over to the sink, unplugged the coffee maker and started walking back to her office.

“Hey, where are you going with that?” protested the tour guides.

“You touch my stuff, I take away your privileges.”

“It was Biffy’s idea.”

“You’re a stinking rat,” replied Biffy to her now ex-friend.

Dinah ignored them and calmly walked down the hall. A coffee maker would go nicely in her office. It wasn’t long before Chumpsy came looking for her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.