Ten Years Running

Nov 16, 2024 by @turgon@dosgame.club

I'd hurt my foot a few weeks earlier but I was too determined not to race. Excitement was everywhere: smiling faces, loud indistinct laughing conversations, blerping PA talk. Someone sang the star spangled banner and then the gun. Sixteen thousand people shuffled forward.

My first run months earlier, I went out wearing a t-shirt and belted cargo shorts and I ran as far as I could, maybe a third of a mile, then walked home exhausted.

Running was really hard and my complete lack of talent was comical. But, my goal was very simple: just run the six mile race without stopping.

Pretty much all my workouts that year were just trying to run six miles. There are much more effective ways to do this, of course, I now know, but I claimed my first six miles on East Cliff Drive and made it to the race tenuously clinging to confidence. Then I raced six without stopping in an hour and fifteen minutes.

Math and running feel similar to me. They are both demanding and vibrant, and fickle. Every season I learn more about my own mind and body, and it's only cost me what, maybe seven thousand miles and a few injuries? Reading a bunch of papers and textbooks? There's so much to explore yet.

The first few years I learned very crude things, like not to drink too much water or I'd get a side stitch, and how to stretch before and after. Later how to program my own workouts, to get enough protein for recovery, to cross train. About anatomy, physiology, nutrition.

The deeper, meaningful stuff is hard to articulate. Like the way a song on the radio can put you back into a specific time of your life, the places I run take on the memory and feelings I had running there before. The work stress, worry about the kids and finances, accomplishments, relationships, grief, love. I pass through several times a week, sifting and weaving something new into the fabric.

There's a moment in each season when I know in my bones I can run anywhere in town. Or I'm up in the hills and come around to a view of the sea hemming in the city, itself pinned beneath the horizon. In bone I can do and see things because of seven thousand or whatever miles behind me. It's fleeting to be able to do this in life and I'm grateful.

An orthopedic surgeon once told me I had ten years of knee cartilage and then I'd be done. I should save it for getting around, he said. He knows what runners are like.

Are they like this? I don't actually know. I don't run with other people so from my perspective we only seem to come together for the murmuration of racing. Race day is here. We will all take our own test, now.

During a race time seems to pass different. I think about my steps, posture, arm position, gait, breathing. I have to dodge people, especially at the beginning before we settle into a flow, and at the finish when some people speed up and others bottom out. I try to take light springy steps and stick with my strategy. Don't look at the watch; YOU FOOL, you looked at it.

I want to finish strong every race, to pass through the line at full speed. After the race, faces are flush, people are sweaty and unkempt. The physical, jittery nervousness is now an exhausted ache, but jubilant. We did it and everyone's eyes know it.

Ten years in running is still really hard. It's a sport of constraints and it will always be really hard. One must settle into discomfort, I've found, let it drive its roots through and marionette you. Turned out worth it for me.

Damn, my ass muscles are sore, I complain for the thousandth time.