Confessions of an ex-runner

by Nicole
So I have to make a confession here. I'm actually not someone who has never run before. My mom, here visiting from the East Coast, is about to bust me ("Didn't you used to run five miles a day or something?" she chirped immediately), so I might as well come clean. I am, in fact, much worse than a non-runner. I am a failed runner. A runner has-been.

I ran all through high school: cross-country, indoor track, outdoor track. (Train all summer, and then repeat.) I ran all that time, and all that time I was, at best, the half-hearted runner. (Here from off-stage I hear a chorus of high-school friends, so okay, maybe I didn't exactly run "all that time," maybe at some point in my senior year I did everyone a favor and officially dropped out.) Anyway, I never really enjoyed it, all that running. I joined those teams because all my closest friends did -- and what, dear god, was I going to do after school if all of them were at the track?

I hated running so much that on those unstructured times, weekends and summers, I would procrastinate around it all day, then run at midnight.

I hated competing so much that at one point during a race, I faked an injury and got escorted, limping, to the first-aid tent. Then had to come up with realistic bruising and swelling for the next day. (Fake blood was not involved, but it might as well have been.)

I so infrequently showed up to practice that at one point, my coach was literally taking me aside every time I did. "Nicole," he would pronounce really, really slowly, as if I were perhaps just a little bit hard of hearing, "you could be a really good runner if you tried. So show up. Try." I'd nod slightly and scoot out of the room, unconvinced and unconvincing.

Then in college I fell in love.

I wandered (or was kind of nudged) into a modern dance class. And I loved it, I thought then, for all the reasons I had not loved running. I loved that it was so purely about form. Where the body goes, and when, and why. I loved that it was both logical and creative. I loved that it even at its most frustrating, when you felt the most dorky you've ever felt, it was impossible to leave class in a bad mood. And most of all, I loved that it was so complex and all-consuming, that in that hour-and-a-half or two hours of class, you absolutely couldn't be thinking about one. single. other. thing.

And running? What I would have dismissively told you until about two months ago: repetitive, mindless motion, all too often with no one to distract you but yourself. Quel horreur! Nothing but you and your thoughts and some long-ass miles ahead of you. I don't know how to put this in a way that reflects at all well, but in my teens and my twenties (and, um, a good portion of my thirties), my inner life could not be characterized as peaceful, exactly. And my outer life was in need of some, shall we say, fine-tuning. Thus: the notion of long hours alone with my thoughts? Hell. Actually.

And so here I am, in my forties, and I gotta say, I only agreed to do this run because Suzy asked me to (sheepishly, and kind of giggling, so I could take it as a joke if I wanted to), and have I mentioned that I adore Suzy? And because Mielle is so sick, and -- you gotta meet this kid -- it's been wrenching to watch and not really be able to do anything.

Nothing in me wanted to run again. You know, the actual running part. I might as well have signed up for a chess-athon, if you see what I mean.

And you know what? Well yes -- and I say this not just because I'm writing on this particular blog -- but I too am loving it. So much so that I spend a lot of those long hours pondering what has made the difference. And there are many factors. There's running for a cause: Mielle, and a cure for that shite disease. Which cause makes me, quite simply, not want to give up. Not at mile two, not at mile six, and not, most recently, at mile eleven. (Which, I gotta say, Suze and I -- woo-hoo! -- rocked.) There's running with a goal in mind: a half-marathon. In my previous runnerly incarnation, my only goals were races I really didn't care about winning. But I like long-shot goals -- becoming a professional dancer after starting at age nineteen was one of them. And running a half-marathon after not running for decades (except, in my one attempt last summer, to utterly blow out my ankle), that seemed like a stretch at best. So I kind of had to bite down on that crazy notion and not let go as well.

There's running with really good company -- and this part I do remember. Nothing like a pack of awesome girls to keep you going and keep you chatting. (Only in high school, we'd divert and run right to the local donut store. With the mamajog gang, we're tenacious about sticking to the mileage. Only after it's lattes and pain-au-chocolat, thank you very much.) Not all of us were really close or even knew each other before we started to train, but these five mamas, I gotta tell you, have logged some good miles together. I haven't really had a gal-pack for a while, since moving from the city to Alameda a couple of years ago, and I had been missing that.

There's all that other stuff too, that we all know but, damn, who has the time to pay attention to. Energy. (I don't wilt at four pm every afternoon anymore.) Muscles. (I have them again.) Air. (It feels really nice to breathe it in.) Intangibles. (A friend just glanced at me as we were picking up our kids from kindergarten, and she literally did a little mini-double-take. "Not that you looked bad before," she began delicately, "but you look great -- and completely different since you started running.") So. What could be more gratifying than all that, two kids and forty-two years later?

But -- what of those weekdays where it's just me and the hard road and the endless miles? (Yeah, well, you all see this coming. But I didn't.) Yup, there it is: I love the time alone with my thoughts. Even the difficult thoughts. Because hey, I have two small children, mulling is a privilege nowadays. And maybe, just maybe, I'm liking what I'm finding, in there. Or at least I'm interested enough to want to know more.

So -- four miles to go. Perfect. Just right.