Meet George Jetson.
His Boy Elroy.
Daughter Judy.
Jane his wife.

—  hoyt curtin, bill hanna and joe barbera

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The Lasso course has a 5 mile marker on the front stretch.

I have no idea why.

Remember back in the old days before GPS watches? You never knew exactly how far you had gone. You had a Casio or a Timex Ironman capable of recording splits, if only you knew what those splits were.

And that was where the beauty of mile markers came in. A running course that had mile markers (or even quarter and half mile markers be still my heart) meant you could find out precisely how slow you were. No more rationalizing! No more making splits up entirely! Hmmm. Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

And then fancy watches with precise measuring capabilities came along, leaving us to scream at race directors when our watches show the course is .000000001 too long and there goes our PR. The humanity.

Mile markers went the way of the dinosaur. Come to think of it, there’s a dinosaur on the bird loop. No idea what the mileage is at that point.

The bird loop also has a big 6 painted on the course. That’s from last year’s Women’s Marathon, which ran through the neighborhood. But I get that one. It actually is a mile marker for something.

The 5 mile marker on the Lasso loop? Beats me.

I’ve gone up and down this stretch of the greenbelt for a lot of miles and I’ve never seen another one. You would think that if there’s a 5, then his little friends 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be lurking nearby. You would be wrong.

And so I run by this 5 mile marker about a billion times a day (half-mile loop, you know). I always check my watch as I pass it, and it pretty much never says 5 miles. But the humble sign keeps a vigil nonetheless, a throwback to a simpler time when you could go out and run without bringing along a technological wonder that would make George Jetson fall off his treadmill.

I would be lost without my Garmin these days.

But I’m pretty sure I could find myself again, standing next to a little blue marker that tells me all I need. Keep running, friend. The finish line is up there somewhere.

Hopefully there will be a marker when I get there.