I Am Not a Runner. I Hate Running. I Do it Anyway.

If every day is the first day of the rest of your life then the first day of a new year shouldn’t be very significant. That’s what I told myself as I laced on my old running shoes. It was pure coincidence that I decided to go running on the first day of January. It was a spur of the moment decision and definitely not something that had been lurking in my subconscious. The extent of my denial was a vast and breathtaking landscape.

I should have walked the first block but I bounded out the front door as if it were a daily occurrence. As if I were a runner. As if I had taken a break from running – maybe I was healing from shin splints for a while – and was getting back into the daily joy of running with a quick jog around the neighborhood. That vast landscape can apparently hide the truth pretty well.

By the second block my calves were demanding to know what I thought I was doing. By the third block my thighs insisted on walking and my lungs seconded the motion. By the fourth block my brain could no longer override my gross motor functions and we all slowed to a walk. A fast walk, I sternly informed my muscles, but a walk nevertheless. Half a mile later I shuffled through my front door and reminded myself that I am not a runner. I never was a runner and I will never be a runner.

Appearances to the contrary, I am, in fact, a sprinter. Well, maybe not in actual fact, but certainly in the vast landscape of both my inner self and my history. I sprinted my way to the Junior Olympics in 4th grade. I sprinted my way to shaking the hand of the legendary Jesse Owens at a track meet in my tweens. I sprinted my way through high school, both on the track and off. I reveled in the simple of joy of being the first off the starter’s block and going fast. Really fast. That kind of thigh burn I can get behind.

My second day of running I tried to recall that prior joy, but I just wasn’t going fast enough, and by the seventh block it was clear I might have to live with the forty-year-old memory of joy. Even simple pleasure was an elusive emotion on my third and fourth days of running, and by the fifth day I realized that nothing had really changed in 40 years. I hated running.

Unfortunately, to be a sprinter, one must jog. The track practices of my youth all started with an eight-minute jog. Days of happy sprinting were interspersed with days of slogging long distance runs. I did not enjoy those days. I endured them to get to the days when I could run as fast as I was able. Days of running up and down bleacher stairs and doing wind sprints in exhausted joy.

By my tenth day of running I owned up to the fact that I had not, in truth, run for ten days in a row. It was getting close to the second month of the new year. I did not run on days of pouring Pacific Northwest rain. There are a lot of those in January. I did not run on really cold days. But I still ran on those other ten days and my shame was mingled with pride.

A quarter of the way through the year I stopped counting how many times I went running. I have an app for that. We're not on very good terms. We're kind of like frenemies who check in once a week or so.

I am not a runner. I am not really persisting in the exercise wholly for my health, however important and necessary. Walking and other forms of exercise would fulfill the health factor, and I do other kinds of workouts regularly. So why am I bothering? I am chasing joy. Every burning step, every gasp for breath, every hard-won block brings me closer to turning the memory of joy into reality.

I recognize I will never recapture the speed and joy of a 16-year-old at her peak. I am not that delusional. My mid-fifties body may be slower, but going as fast as I can still makes me happy. Aging is inevitable, and old age looks a lot closer every year, but I see my friends and peers doing things and living in ways our mothers mostly didn't. We are re-defining what it means to age as a woman. We're dreaming awesome dreams and making them come true. So, what I am doing is running after a new dream of pushing my limits with the wind in my face. Even though I’m not a runner.