Resolve Read Online Free Page A

pour the water all over you. There are a few different approaches: the sip-and-hope, the chug-and-cough, or the popular funnel technique, where you bend the paper cup to create a channel of water flowing into your mouth, those are probably the top three. I usually attempt the funnel technique, with limited success. I’ve run in some races where they’ve used sturdy Styrofoam cups. You can pick out the funnel-loving rookie who can’t figure out why his cup of water just exploded all over his face when he tried to bend it. It’s funny when it doesn’t happen to you.

    “Y ou know what the number one cause of divorce is, don’t you?”
    I bit my tongue, having heard Aaron tell this one before.
    “Marriage!”
    There was rhythmic laughter between footfalls.
    “Randy, the point is that Debbie has been with me for over twenty years, so I don’t think she’s going to leave me now just because I bought another boat.”
    “I’m not saying she’s going to leave you, Aaron. I’m just saying that you make things too hard on yourself. You know you’re never going to hear the end of it.”
    “What about you? Don’t you think a man has a right to buy a bigger bass boat regardless of what his wife says?” He had turned his head from Randy and was looking over at Jacob now.
    There was the slightest tick on Aaron’s face as he realized his mistake. Jacob was a widower who had lost his wife, Tabatha, to an undiagnosed heart condition a few months before. Everybody knew that their marriage had serious problems, but he still felt the loss immensely.
    After a thoughtful pause, Jacob responded with a sly grin, “I suppose so. Just don’t expect your pole to get any action anywhere but on that boat.”
    The crack alleviated the temporary tension.
    That topic was still off-limits. During our frequent runs, pretty much anything was open for discussion: work, sports, politics, the economy—pretty much anything that distracted us from the run itself. Distraction is a friend on these runs in the first weeks of spring when the cold hangs on, only reluctantly loosening its grip. Talking about our relationships was commonplace until Tabatha’s death. That spring, out of respect for Jacob, we mostly avoided the subject and he quietly appreciated our discretion.
    We tried to run together every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the fall and spring semesters, at least when the cold and snow didn’t hinder us. We scheduled Saturday as rest day because Sunday mornings were reserved for our individual long runs, which consisted of anywhere between ten to twenty miles depending on where we were in our respective training schedules.
    While I liked running with those guys during the week, I came to appreciate the solitary nature of my Sunday runs. You can really think things through on those days when you have to stay in your own head and there isn’t any chatter to distract you. It’s also more of a challenge simply because of that—no distractions. You have to train your brain to ignore the fatigue and the pain all on its own.
    Those days in late March were the initial ramp-up to the Pittsburgh Marathon for all of us, so that day’s frigid eight-miler was more than enough. Well, at least it was enough for me. We had always done our best to find a common gap in our schedules to make sure that we had time for a six- or eight-mile run along the river trails or through the city streets. The other three established the ritual before I arrived at TRU. Jacob invited me to join the group after repeatedly seeing me running by myself. He’d been my running and professional mentor ever since.
    Most of the sidewalks and paths are wide enough for only two or three people to run side by side; so as the junior member of the group, in both seniority and age, I typically trailed a few feet behind out of deference. That, and I didn’t want Jacob to see me huffing and puffing at this pace.
    The man didn’t seem human. Despite being fifteen years