Keeping Her Resolution – A Quadrille and Runfession #17, January 2022

She is heard before seen

Her breathing huh-huh-huh heavy 

As if suffocating on the cold air

Yet not actually dying 

Puffs of effort-filled mist 

Emanating from her open mouth 

Her chicken-plucked skin shivering 

Despite the winter sun

No sweat to prove

Her dedicated determination

Guess who this quadrille is about?

I started writing this poem last week but didn’t get a chance to finish and lost the original “essence’ of what I was going to write. Thank goodness for Merrill’s d’Verse Quadrille #144 prompt – Shiver for getting me back on track! I also have to give props to Björn for his response, “Afterward” and to Kate for her response, “Quiver” to this prompt that set my wheels turning again! Check out “Mr. Linky” for other wonderful shivering submissions! NOTE: I did “cheat” a little with my hyphenated words which I counted as one word to make the 44 word limit. Merrill – will you let that slip buy? I’ll buy you a drink at the d’Verse bar! 😉

So, obviously the “she” in this quadrille is me! This my first Runfession of 2022 but my 17th Runfession blog post since I started doing them in 2019. My last Runfession was actually in January of 2021 – so it has been a year that I’ve been on my running hiatus. Yikes!! Now the huffing and puffing make sense!

You can’t tell from the picture, but it was a pretty cold day when I decided to do a short and quick outdoor interval run. But the sun was out and I had set a goal for myself to restart running/walking/moving of any kind this month.

I have to admit, getting back to running has been hard especially due to my knee injury which hasn’t fully resolved. I’m trying to take it easy and focus on form and (time) endurance rather than speed and mileage. It’s a different way of running, a different idea of myself as a runner but if I want to keep running, this is what I have to do. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Right?…

Also linking to Marcia’s Health Slice, originator of the Runfession.

©️ 2022 iido