Dream What May

In a funny way, I actually enjoy the anxiety dreams that come the night before a big race. It's part of the process, part of the excitement, and it's fascinating the stuff my brain comes up with under stress. So I thought I'd list a few of the dreams I've had the night before past races.

San Jose, 2007, my first half marathon, I dreamed I couldn't find my shoes and socks. I looked everywhere, found one under the bed, one in the closet under a pile of junk, found my socks in weird places. Then I finally had them all gathered, I put them on. Ready to go, I looked down and discovered I was barefoot. My shoes and socks had disappeared. I frantically looked everywhere. I found one in the kitchen, the other behind the TV. I put them on and next thing I know they're gone again. This went on, each time I put my shoes on they disappeared, and I found them scattered around the house in progressively more unusual places after much frantic searching. Oh, and there was a girl in this dream. Or rather, would have been if I could ever find my shoes and get to the starting line.

Several times I've had a dream where my clothes shrink and grow to impossible dimensions while I'm trying to put them on, or is it me, like Alice in Wonderland eating magic cakes.

The night before Nike in San Francisco, I dreamed had to run a quick errand before the race. Next thing I know I'm in Palo Alto - 30 miles away - on my bicycle, asking for directions to the starting line.

In Hawaii, I dreamed that half way through the marathon I stopped for lunch. By the time I finished and stepped back outside, night had fallen. I wondered, do I finish running the course in the dark?

Also the night before Nike, I dreamed I overslept and woke up an hour after the race started. I wondered, should I run the race anyway? And what do I tell everyone afterwords? In my dream I considered hiding out another hour and then just pretending I ran.

I often have dreams about oversleeping, yet I don't think I've ever overslept. I seem to be able to wake up at the right time, even under normal circumstances. Often I wake up less than five minutes before my alarm goes off. It's like I have an internal alarm clock with remarkable precision. As long as I know what time I want to wake up I seem to just wake up. My clock radio is just there for reassurance, it seems. When I was a kid I practiced lucid dreaming.

I'm sure there's more, I remember having more, but dreams are fleeting. Most are gone as soon as they arrive. Even jarring dreams are lost within hours of waking. A precious few stay long enough to tell a friend. One, perhaps, might linger for years, haunting, reminding, but it is not the dream that stays, it is we who hold on to it, refusing to let it go, afraid of losing something we never had. Dreams want to be forgotten. Dreams, dark vacuum cleaner of the mind, throwing out the day's clutter and making room for another.

Dreams. They come and go like trains, and my sleeping mind but a whistle-stop on their way.