Daily I swim in circles with wellness sharks, alternately chasing and evading. I am keenly aware of both what my body no longer seems to do and all it never did, which I can distill for you in my distorted relationship with running.
I am simultaneously a person who believes everyone is equally inherently worthy of love and dignity and a seat at the table AND someone who paradoxically believes that those who run jovially, for sport or fitness or because tHEy LiKe iT are morally superior to me. When I see folks casually posting their Strava paths on the inter webs, I see many miles and a scarcity of minutes. To be honest, I also think that people who play six-stringed instruments and enjoy sushi are on this slightly superior moral ground, for reasons that make absolutely no sense except that I think I should be like them and do not understand what I’m getting wrong that I am not.
In 1993 I joined the track team, where I ran until I vomited nearly every day after school. As the ‘season’ wore on, I ran home more often than I completed the distance course with the team through the neighborhoods surrounding the junior high. First I’d fall back, then turn, then be home. I found I could run at nearly any speed for six minutes, and then I would die. Run fast? Conk out. Run slow? Conk out. There seemed to be an internal countdown in me that gave me six minutes to evade the tiger, and that was it.
This has continued for most years since. I’ll get an adorable notion in April that perhaps I should run, once the ice is gone and the weather warms up. Not to affect the size of my body, but in an effort to join the elite and moral club of those who casually go for a run before work, or after work, or on a lunch break. Just a few, effortless miles.
Frequently, I’ll run a few times a summer, attempting to adhere to a ‘program’ assembled by a ‘running coach’ or an app. These often suggest running first thing in the morning. Doing the run/walk. Doing this three to four times a week (but not seven!). Consistency within reason.
In 2021 I got most of the way through the couch to 10K app, mostly because I was running away from the holy terror of the six months preceding. Turns out the key to my running success (at least that time) was global pandemics, caregiving, and unemployment (follow me for more tips…).
Last summer vertigo interrupted my process quite early on.
This April, as the notion arrived, it came in the late afternoons. It was as it has always been, the same pace at which I walk the same distance. An incredible effort to push past seven minutes, and arriving 30 minutes and two miles later, back at home, feeling mostly like dog shit.
But this time?
This time I had the ring.
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