Alternative Visualizing

This is a little piece I got published a long time ago in a running magazine - I stumbled across this cleaning out some old files - since we were talking about visualization, here's an alternate approach to add to your training regimen.

VISUALIZING WITH HISTORY

I can still hear their voices. Cries of anger, cries of fear and despair, cries of anguish. Battered men, out of breath and desperate for water. I hear them through the bare trees of late winter even though the voices were stilled one hundred and thirty four years ago.
I am running in the early twilight of mid-February along the northeastern ridge of Shy’s Hill. It was here that in late December, 1864 that young boys from Maine and Massachusetts charged out of the gully in the bottom of the hill and swept over the crest breaking the weak Confederate siege of Nashville and pushing the Army of Tennessee into the mists of tragic history.
The Confederate General Hood had brought his army to this spot after being hideously bloodied in the Battle of Franklin. Hood’s grand scheme, after losing Atlanta, had been to march north, defeat two Union armies and return Tennessee and Kentucky to the Confederacy. Then he would hang a hard right up around Cincinnati, and head east through Ohio and Pennsylvania towards Washington DC uniting with Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia somewhere on Pennsylvania Avenue. Hood was a “big picture” guy! Mail was pretty slow back then, so it is unclear if Confederate authorities ever approved of his plan. Even if they had not, there wasn’t much they could do. Hood was loose heading north, leaving the Union army under Sherman to head for the Georgia coast playing with matches along the way.
Hood’s grand plan fell apart on the slopes of Shy’s Hill, and now, a century and half later, I run the same route the attacking Yankees ran but without fear. At times I feel the speculative twinges of the fright they must have experienced as they rose up and began their charge into the gathered guns at the top of the hill. As I burst out of the same small valley at the base of the hill, I am greeted with the lights of oncoming cars on Hillsboro Road. They would have been greeted by grapeshot and minnie ball. My Sauconies are a little worn, but the rest of my clothing is comfortable given the unseasonable warmth. They would have worn heavy leather boots, heavy wool overcoats and wool clothing. They were carrying monstrously heavy rifles, which they desperately reloaded as they ran.
I work my way around the hill and in the gathering darkness find the historical marker that marks the path through the woods to the top of the hill. I make this charge as part of my strength training. Arms swinging I pound up the trail to the top. I feel the massive lactic burn turning my legs from pistons to gelatinous non-compliant goo, breaking down my will to carry forward. But I persist, imagining bullets whizzing around me as I reach the crest and find the small cross that marks the center of the Confederate line.
From here, the lights of downtown Nashville spread out before me. This was the high ground that had to be captured by the Union forces. Catching my breath, I imagine myself as one of the young boys from Alabama or Tennessee that fought to the end. They were not encumbered with the material goods of their Union counterparts. Few had shoes or coats, ammunition and food were scarce. Their perseverance rested on the simple premise that “they” were down “here.” And “here” was home for these boys. For some, home was a short walk away. Some would die able to see their homes in the distance. Later that evening, their mothers and wives would search the hillside in the darkness hoping and praying not to find their loved ones.
Now I scramble down the backside of the hill toward Granny White Pike, following the pattern of retreat and dissolution of the Confederate Army. Returning to streetlights and the trappings of a modern subdivision I regain my modern self. Still, as I slowly jog home I hear the voices.