Running Without Being Chased

Whenever I tell someone I am training for a marathon, it sounds ever so much more badass than it actually is. I mean, a marathon is 26.2 miles and thus is indeed badass just by existing. The longest I’ve ever run is a 10K (6.2 miles) and that came with great suffering on my behalf. So in order to finish the marathon, I just have to do that like 4 more times! In the same race. On the same day.

However, at this very moment? I am not in a good training space. I am not into it. A little bit of rain yesterday wimped me out. The other day it was because it was 10 degrees too hot. Sometimes it’s because I’m too lazy to gather my stuff to go to the gym.

This rebellion on my part would be understandable if I were not into it because maybe I was burned out from all the mileage I was putting in, but when you’re only walking and running for 20 to 30 minutes, there is no excuse.

When I was a pre-adolescent, I had a lot of inferiority complexes about a lot of things. One of them was feeling like I was bad at sports in comparison to my friends. To me, running was my thing because let’s face it, I was otherwise no athlete. If a ball was going to hit anyone in the face during gym class, it was going to be me. And don’t get me started on all the traumatic memories surrounding picking teams in gym class.

But at some time in the early 80s when everyone else was prancing around in their aerobics leg warmers and Fame leotards, my dad took up running. He trained almost every day, and his goal was to run in as many 10K races as possible. He trained with a friend who was into marathons and who pushed them to run extraordinary distances (to me, 10 miles seemed, well, crazy talk!). My dad had been quite chubby and within a short period of time, he was a lean, mean, runner living off endorphin highs. Oh, how I longed for my very own endorphin high.
At the time, I was taking ballet lessons, which I did not like. I think I wanted to like ballet, but it was definitely not for me. For one thing, the ballet classes met during the precious few hours of daylight between school and dark when I wanted to be outside playing with my friends (yes, readers, this was before the internet, before video games, before decent television – kids actually played outside in those days!) But more importantly, imagine someone with three legs who had had reached her full, towering height of 5’2” and development at the age of ten being in a class of flat-chested little girls not being the elephant in the room. Impossible, right?

When I started running to imitate my dad and also because my mom told me I didn’t need to take ballet lessons anymore if I took up running for real, something clicked. The endorphins might have clouded my mind a little, but here was a sport I could do. It did not involve balls flying at my head or teammates screaming at me or prancing elephants. As far as pre-adolescent embarrassment, the worst I ever got from running was one obnoxious boy who used to sing the Rocky theme whenever he saw me running by (did I mention it was the 80’s?).

I loved making running challenges for myself. I loved how one week I could say I was only running 1 mile per run, but the next week I could move it up to 2 miles, building up slowly until I was running for an unimaginable 4-5 miles. I loved how fast I could get in shape, how marvelous the endorphins were. Sure, I was suffering while running, cursing every step, every gasp, but afterwards? No other sport since has ever given me the kind of endorphins that running does.

That’s why running is impossible to quit for me. Every year I say I’m going to quit running. It’s bad for my knees, not necessary to keep in shape, and it’s hard on the joints. It’s sweaty and messy. It’s time-consuming. And so every year I make a melodramatic announcement that running is not for me anymore, that tragically I must leave running for the people without knee and back problems, who are ten to fifteen years younger than me. But then that itch comes back, that need to create challenges for myself, that need to suffer until I hit that high.

So today I am training for a marathon. Doesn’t that sound badass to you? I thought so.