Day 4 February 19, 2008
Since the Kirklyn area has proven to be larger than I first thought, I decide to return there so that I can finish up what I think of as the furthest northeast corner of the township. I have mentally divided Upper Darby into quadrants with Landsdowne Avenue and Garrett Road serving as the bisectors. The four divisions are nowhere equal in area or total street lineage. The Beverly Hills and Drexel Hill areas both straddle Garrett Road so the division doesn’t make “cultural” sense either. It is simply convenient from a runner’s point of view. The Kirklyn-Highland Park area occupies most of the northeast quadrant in this scheme and I’m planing to cover the neighborhoods first which are closest to my home in the Beverly Hills section.
Zigzagging through my neighborhood I head up Merion Road and then Arlington Road. On the way I want to cover a couple of short blocks on Montrose Avenue and Suburban Lanes that I missed on earlier runs. I then cross West Chester Pike and double back again on my earlier route through Kirklyn. I twice pass the entrance to “The Hidden Playground” at the intersection of Wadas Avenue and Meadowbrook Road. Barclay, Bayberry, Parker and Linden require more double tracking. I then leave Kirklyn and heading home cover more blocks in Highland Park between Lennox and West Chester Pike as I come down the hill toward State Road.
Originally I thought that I could find routes that would be 95% efficient, that is that only 5% of my running would be on streets that I’d already thru-run. On the very first run I dropped that estimate to 85%. Now I’m thinking that it might be as low as 60%. This journey, a series of smaller journeys, will entail quite a bit of backtracking. Many journeys do. One can think of their life as a series of backtracks. You start out on the baby trail and revisit later as a parent and then again, if blessed, as a grandparent. You start one school as a neophyte, then master its labyrinths only to leave and repeat the same path at another school. You make the same mistakes over and over again. Fight the same fights with your spouse over and over. And when you get older, you repeat the same lame stories and bad jokes. Symphony musicians continue to practice scales their whole career. We spend our lives trying to get it right - this time. Maybe life isn’t an advance forward, maybe it is hidden in the repetition. After all, the Hindus say that we’ll be doing this again in our next life.
Distance: 5.95 miles Time: 57 min 29 sec Pace: 9:40 min/mile
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