Deja Vu

Well, I didn't make it out to Stone Mountain for a trail run after work on Tues.  Recall from Monday's post that I am in Atlanta for a standards conference, cooped up indoors doing work that, while necessary and useful, is B-O-R-I-N-G.  So I needed a trail fix, badly.

Unfortunately, we worked too late, past 5:00 PM, to permit sufficient time to drive out and run at Stone Mountain.

So...Plan B was to head east on 14th Street on foot from my hotel near Georgia Tech over to Piedmont Park to try to get a 10 miler in.  This is a beautiful and spacious urban park that is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise sterile concrete and steel environment.

When I first entered the park I decided to loop the perimeter.  As I proceeded around it reminded me of something but I could not put my finger on it.  But then I reached the corner of the park where the dog park sits, and I thought, "I know this place...I think I've been here before" although I could not be any more specific than that. 

Then I headed around the part of the park that runs along 10th Street and suddenly I knew--I had run there before, back in 2004 or 2005, in the fall following when Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.  I had been in Atlanta for another conference and was staying at a hotel further south, and had also run up to Piedmont Park--from another direction--to do some park running.  I remember this because that fall Atlanta was the recipient of many refugees from New Orleans, and I was able to help a couple people with money and food.

Anyway, that year when I ran at Piedmont Park, I came upon a distraught young female runner who, it turns out, had just been flashed by a guy I could see running off across one of the open grassy fields.  I stayed with her and we ran a couple laps together until she was composed and settled again. 

Tues evening I called home and told the bride that I've been doing this job too long--too many airports and hotel rooms and conferences and meetings that I could no longer recall the specifics of certain trips unless something served to remind me...such as remembering running in an urban park.

This trip's run was a good one--pretty and uneventful.  The Eastern Redbuds and dogwoods were in full bloom, as were many other flowers.  It was a great early dose of spring, my body felt good, and I was rejuvenated.