About

running-legs-small

I’ve been running regularly for six years now — enthusiastically, I might add — and I’ve yet to call myself a “real” runner.

I think it might have something to do with that sinking feeling I get when a sinewy team of teenage boys soundlessly glides past as I dawdle along.

Or the fact that — although I firmly believe in the necessity of technical fibers, the use of appropriate footwear, the miracle of orthotics, and consumption of “energy” foods — to bandy about the lingo in the presence of a certain audience leaves me feeling more than just a bit false.

Or yet still, perhaps it’s something to do with my hesitancy in wearing skin-tight leggings: A fear born out of my aversion to ill-placed sweat marks, the kind that would make it appear as though I’m running because I’ve just had an accident and am rushing home to remedy the situation — not because I simply love running.

Because I do.  (Against all odds) I love it.

It’s because I love running that stokes my obsession with it, and keeps me running although I’m (on some level) conscious of how ridiculous I look while in the act. Today I’m finally willing calling myself a runner — the farsighted runner, to be precise — in commemoration of a recent day when, after spending an afternoon with a good book, I found myself hitting the running trails with my reading glasses accidentally still on. Unwilling to turn around, I toughed it out for 45 minutes of discomfort and semi-blindness as the lenses fogged with my own sweat.

This website chronicles my tales of being a runner, glasses on or off.