Why I Ran

This past autumn, I did a lot of running. I was not a "runner," I was a relatively athletic human training for a marathon, so my determination and enthusiasm were fuelled mostly by fear. Throughout the training, I learned the things that runners care and talk about: hydrating, carb loading, and bowel movements. I experienced runner's high. Then I chased runner's high. Midway through the training program, I began having creative flashes when running solo, and enjoyed short streams of words flowing through my mind, if only a few words at a time somedays. These moments of wordplay made me feel artful and alive. Running was strenuous, and sometimes filled with pain and doubt, but it was joyful.

Running was also social. I joined a running club in the summer of 2011 to distract myself from months of lonely grad school work. Running practice provided the perfect foil for exam readings, and I built my meals and exam goals around my practice schedule. I saw the same group of people up to five times a week. We knew more about each other than did our families and close friends. Hours running elbow to elbow make that unavoidable.

In many training clubs, the longest run of the week is on Sunday morning. After long Sunday morning runs, our group refuelled and debriefed over mounds of eggs and much coffee at the local brunch pub. We were each in different careers and stages of life, but had the running-club personality in common (some more than others). I started as a fly on the wall when it came to running speak. Two seasons later, I knew enough of my own muscle spasms and post-speed-work upset stomach to wax stretching and energy-gel strategy with the fastest of them.

When weeks crept toward the November 2012 Philadelphia Marathon, running became synonymous with breathing. I only took Mondays off, and that day was spent doing a yoga class or stretching on ice packs. Motivated by performance anxiety, I easily declined social activities that would interfere with running, even if it were only the next day's run, or the long run the day after that. I didn't feel the loss of my non-runner friends. I loved arriving at practice well fuelled and rested and ready to go. I was a runner.

The alarm on my BlackBerry didn't exactly replace my friends, but it kind of became my buddy. Early alarm, grumpy morning stomach, splash of water on face and down throat, 12 kilometers along the mothy river at the humid Ottawa sunrise, writing, eating, eating, eating and still mid-afternoon starvation, and early evening brain crash became the routine, and the uniqueness of going through a day on that rhythm was more thrilling than anything. The endorphins didn't hurt either. I grinned ear-to-ear for two straight months.

On one of the last speed training evenings before our tapering regimen, a brisk October Wednesday, my friends Hillary, Randy, Mel, and I jogged from our run club to the gravel track of a local high school. Nights were coming earlier, and the track was unlit. 

After the first fast mile (which came to 4.5 laps of this slightly undersized track), we each peeled an outer layer. In tank tops and shorts, our thighs and arms (deeply tanned from a summer of training in oppressive Ontario heat) glistened with sweat under the moonlight. We were nervous for the laps ahead. We jittered, shook our limbs, spoke excitedly, shared words of encouragement, joked about eating too recently. Randy exclaimed, "This is for Philly." I mumbled 'Philly' to myself as we took to the start line for the next sprint.

The second mile went quickly and I looked forward to the third. I was warm and powerful. By the end of the third, I could feel lactic acid collecting in my quads and my bottom half started to get heavy. In the fourth mile, which was our fastest, my legs wobbled, my lungs prickled, I felt on the verge of tripping, and I had to deny to my brain that there was more to go in order to get it to tell my legs and arms to round that final turn. Come on, body. Do your thing.

In the 5th mile sprint, the last sprint I would do before Philadelphia because I was about to acquire an injury, my brain was alight with motivational vocabulary. As wordy as my brain became on long runs through the Gatineau hills, that particular city night, it was full of adjectives and metaphor. I ran in step with Hillary. As we wound around one end of the track midway through the mile, pushing out air and sucking it back in, I imagined we were precariously attached to each other by a suspended wire, connecting each of our hearts by the cool gelly pads of an electrotherapy machine. If one of us were to change pace, the pads would slip off, leaving us each to suffer the end of the run alone. Without the heart of the other. I imagined the coolness of the gel pads gently vibrating to soothe my beating heart.

My narration went on like that for a few more seconds and I imagined sputtering out to Hillary my thoughtful heart-attacher story. I imagined that the only thing to say in response to something so ridiculous (or in response to any comment made in those excruciating moments, for that matter) was "fuck," so I didn't say anything and kept on sprinting to the end. We crossed that final finish line, everyone high-fived, and after dumping back some powdery water and sliding the top layers back on, we slowly jogged to our respective homes.

Months later, I sit in my physiotherapist's office with a jammed pelvis. I can't run or jump or bike and I miss the folks who are taking laps of the track and piles of post-30k scrambled eggs without me. Since I've been so injured, many people have chuckled at me that, "See? Marathons hurt people! We, as humans, are not meant to run that far!" But I wouldn't trade crossing that Philadelphia finish line with Hillary and Mel and Randy for the world.