The Swerve

"It's 8 a.m. over Val Rosandra, Italy, and dawn doesn't break. It seeps - day through the night - exposing a system in the middle of things."

"It exposes water in the middle of an endless debate with limestone. It exposes wind, La Bora, it's called, in the middle of a stout burst, leaving water for land."

"And for me, Somewhere was eight hours ago, at midnight, in a village called Sistiana, north of Trieste. It was there that my fellow runners and I found ourselves huddled in a beachside locker room, not-so-patiently awaiting our race director's parting words."

"Who knows? I don't speak Italian, but I did manage to catch his final "Buona Fortuna!" That was my cue to cross the starting line, out of Somewhere, into ... Nowhere."

Dawn over Val Rosandra arrives as a seep of light, revealing a landscape caught between water and limestone. The La Bora wind moves fiercely, shifting the boundary between sea and land and stirring the waking city of Trieste. A runner finds themselves halfway through an extended footrace around the Karst, naming the region Nowhere while acknowledging its layered origins. Water began as space-born molecules; the wind's origin lies in oceanic ranges; Trieste began as an Illyrian outpost shaped by geology and defense. Pre-race hours in Sistiana lead to a midnight start and a shouted "Buona Fortuna!"

Read at iRunFar