Cells are elastic. They have to be, of course, otherwise we'd resemble a character from an old 8-bit video game. They stretch and compress and revert. They remember what they are. As do they, so do all of your other living parts. That's where I start. Distance, time, speed, those will come later.
The bones: feel like they're filled with concrete. I used to have the bones of a bird, hollow, titanium-strong.
The muscles: atrophied from long days at the desk, victims of an Alzheimer's of my own making. (A curable one, though. There's that. The remedy: a cocktail of squats, stretches, hills and deep, dry sand.)
The blood: it moves through the veins like strawberry preserves, thick, clotted, muscles squeezing blue and red tubes like toothpaste containers, pushing the viscous stuff towards the heart. That's the first thing I remember as I bang down the trail: how it sang, how it ran like quicksilver.
The heart is trying to push its way through my ribcage.
The lungs: newborn. Like balloons straight from the packaging, tight, resistant, averse to inflation. The breaths are quick and shallow and each is accompanied by a word from the chant in my head: there. is. only. one. finish. line.
