The Farsighted Runner

At one time (going on several years ago, I might add) I thought that running was for the birds. I suspected that in the human genome there existed a special trait that made strenuous activity fun.

And I lacked it.

This opinion had evolved slowly over a number of years, but its roots began with a painfully bad experience — that is, my first foray into running. In high school, I had taken up running for mostly superficial reasons — that is to say, I was a teenager and wanted to be sun-kissed and lithe.

As ashamed as I am now to admit it, I was more concerned with looking healthy rather than actually being healthy. It was a psychologically low time in which tanning beds and Slim Fast figured prominently. I remember friends of mine — who participated in cross country — suggesting that I take up smoking because it helped curb hunger pains. Although I was stupid enough to give smoking a try, after a few cigarettes my wheezing asthmatic lungs informed me that the stint was over and I had better pursue another tactic.

And that’s when I started running.

My father — a man who smoked his first cigarette at age 11 and consequently had a large swath of his lower left lung surgically removed due to benign tumorous growths — blew out a stream of smoke (tilted conscientiously upward, as has always been his habit), and dispensed with what amounted to the first bit in a series of bad advice that I was to encounter on how to go about running. He told me to kick my knees up high.

And it is at this point where I feel compelled to share a quick aside on the topic of my father.

He’s a man who, incidentally, had been a high school track star of sorts. I know this not because of a childhood spent listening to him reminisce about the good old days. It’s from others that I’ve caught glimpses of this former life. One thing I genuinely admire about him is his modesty — my father is not a braggart, by any stretch of the imagination — but, possessing this virtue also means that (to my mind, at least) it has left him shrouded in mystery. Even today — although we have a relationship completely devoid of the tension brought on by my angsty adolescence – I am keenly aware of the fact that there is a great deal about my father that I still do not know.

So, in some respects, it was my father — whose running reputation was built upon his status as the fastest sprinter in a relay team, the “anchor” — that I was trying to emulate when I started running. (That, and as I mentioned before – with Memorial Day and the opening of the local pools approaching — I had rather regrettable shallow ulterior motives as well).

The advice my father gave me was spot on — for someone running the hundred-meter dash. Not for a dilettante such as myself, who had firmly decided to kick things off by running three miles a day, 5 days a week. (This, after having never shown much interest in athletics or exercise.)

I would be surprised if on that first day out I lasted even five minutes.

I stuck with it doggishly though. Despite debilitating muscle soreness that left me with an awkwardly stiff gait (when running or walking), I continued to put in my time each day. I made a lot of mistakes and paid for it by feeling wretched approximately 100% of the time. I refused to eat properly (or at all), and developed insane cravings which would lead to shameful binges consisting of several heaping platefuls of spaghetti or an entire half gallon of Neapolitan.

But — perhaps worst of all — I developed shin splints.

Not surprisingly, sometime around my senior year of high school I stopped exercising, entirely and defiantly. I equated physical activity with pain and exhaustion, and in the years to come whenever anyone brought up doing anything that remotely resembled exercise (e.g., cycling a few blocks to get ice cream), I resisted. With respect to exercise, I deflected by enthusiastically borrowing the Woody Allen line “I prefer to atrophy”.

This attitude shaped my behavior for the better part of the following decade. Then, in my middle 20’s things changed. Mostly, I had become unpleasantly preoccupied with the realization that someone so young (namely, myself) should feel so very unhealthy.

My approach towards running was one of moderation (by sprinkling at odd intervals five or ten minutes of light jogging into my walking routine), and — most notably — my motives were entirely different. Taking things slow, exercise left me feeling energized, not exhausted and irritable. And, I wanted to be healthy.

This new approach — it worked. It wasn’t until I’d been running for a couple of years already that I began to entertain the idea of running a half marathon. Eventually, I worked my way up to the marathon distance. But building up to that too was a deliciously gradual act.

My attitude towards running — and, more importantly, my own health in general — changed several years ago.

And now when I run, I savor it.