Summer nights like these have had me feeling nostalgic.

In college once the school year was over I would move back home for the summer with my parents and I always saw it as my chance to ground myself before heading back.

While I had great teammates, I enjoyed the time away from the noise. The pressure of high level competition felt like years away and having few things to worry about felt refreshing .

These days would consist of helping around the house, working, hanging out with friends, and often going for a 2nd run at night on the empty streets of town using only the streetlights as my guide.

I would look at the clock as I headed out the door and when I came back to calculate how far I ran. I would decide what turns to make as I came up on them. Paces were estimated and distances were probably inflated. I rarely ran the same loop as I created the route based upon what I was in the mood for. I often ran on remote single track trails almost never coming across another person as I let my mind wander.

There was little structure or rules outside of showing up to work on time and getting the mileage in.

There was beauty in the simplicity of it.

The seemingly endless summer of running, working, and spending time with friends are some of my most treasured memories even if it’s hard to recall anything of significance for a majority of those days.

It seems absurd that I found so much meaning in evenings that were so relatively unimportant.

On Friday night I was reminded of this feeling.

I headed down to Greensboro to watch one of my good friends and athletes, Zach Vaslow, run a 5K time trial. The air was thick as temperatures were still near 85 degrees as the race got underway. The cicadas buzzed in harmony as the sun was setting on the empty high school track and that feeling hit me again; one that I haven’t felt since the years where I would slip out the door at dusk and pay tribute to the sleepy streets of my town.

No crowds, no chip timing, and potentially breaking trespassing laws I remembered the feeling of summer. While the race wasn’t everything he hoped for, he put himself out there when no one else was watching, just to see where his limits were.

With an ailing foot and a broken collarbone to boot, I have spent a lot of time these last couple of years trying to find my grounding that came so naturally on the empty farm roads around my house and I have struggled to get away from the noise and the negative thoughts that occur. I kept looking for the deep sense of satisfaction that came from heading out the door daily with no real plan in mind except the intention to work hard.

Years of searching and all it took was watching a small group of friends pushing each other to their farthest reaches to see what would happen as the rest of the world unknowingly went on with their evening.

It seems absurd that I found so much meaning in an event that relatively was unimportant.

COVID sucks, a broken collarbone sucks, and endless cross training hours on a bike trainer suck. But, when I look back at this time I hope I will view this period of my life like the college summer of my past. I feel like I’m finding my grounding once again. I feel like I can now start thinking about my goals once again and feel like just like when I was younger, dreaming of future days and surrounding myself with the joy of hard work.

But there is beauty in the simplicity of it.