Running

So I'm a runner.

For the last five months, it's been my freedom and maintained my sanity.

Two years ago, I started racing again. After a few 5ks, I set myself a goal to run a half marathon; it seemed a good goal -- long but not dangerously long, difficult but achievable, a challenging yet reasonable training schedule. 

In training, I finally discovered the true joys of distance running. I can try to explain it, but you really have to experience it. The physiological benefits are clear enough: you burn calories, improve muscle tone, increase lung capacity, strengthens the cardiovascular system. It also calms me and helps me focus on work. There's the sense of working toward a goal: with two half marathons under my belt, I have a quite respectable time (I broke 1:45 last June and am eying a late October race for my first real crack at 1:40 -- not setting the world on fire, but quite solid for a casual runner). Distance running also forces you to execute a strategy on the course in a way that running a 5 or even 10k really doesn't. It's a wonderful feeling when you successfully execute your strategy -- and break out from your pace group on mile 10.

But more than any of these things, running gives me autonomy. It gives me an identity. It gives me a purpose. It gives me achievements. All those things that unemployment takes away, running returns a measure.



I am in control of myself when I run. I set my route; I vary my pace in accordance to my judgement. I can compete or not when I choose to do so. I experience a part of the richness of the world -- and running the Rice loop or Herrman  Park are lovely parts of the world -- on my own terms.  When people see me, they know what I am doing and where I am going. It gives me things to discuss -- an identity.

It means that for one hour five days a week, I belong.

I first joined the track team when I was in eighth grade, as a way to keep in shape for soccer. By the time I was a junior in high school, I had traded in my soccer cleats for cross country spikes. I appreciated that cross-country was both a team sport and an individual one in a way that soccer wasn't. Every race was against the other team, but it was also against the clock -- there was always a chance to get measurably better, even when you were completely overmatched or were far ahead of your opponent.

Distance runners fit my personality a bit better than the typical jock mode of the higher profile team sports; they were quirky, friendly and more tolerant of outsiders. Running for me was associated with the social home I found on my high-school cross country team and the delightfully mild-mannered coach we fondly called the "stat rat" for the notebooks full of split times on each of us on the team.

I wasn't fast enough to run competitively in college, but I always kept my running shoes updated and never quite gave up training -- though sometimes months would slip by between runs.

But I'm back now. 

I too believe in the Blerch -- but five times a week, I lace up my sneakers, charge outside and I belong.