THE VERY FIRST STEP

After an alarming discovery, a runner is born—though he has a long, long way to go.

By Marc Parent, Runner’s World

PUBLISHED 08/27/2008

I promise you, I was not a runner. I did run in high school, but only because I had to. I played third seat on a very weak varsity tennis team. Our coach would yell at us through cupped hands as we ran laps around the gym. He'd tell us we were the worst tennis players in the conference, but we would be in the best shape. We had whole practices during which we just held our tennis rackets and ran.

Over the 20-plus years since then, I had watched people all around me run, but I had not joined them. My dad and my sisters ran. My college roommates ran. My girlfriend ran every morning before classes. We got married and then I had a wife who ran. Everyone knew better than to ask me to join them. I wasn't a runner in the same sense that I wasn't a golfer or a bowler or a bass fisherman. I'd as soon slip on a T-shirt and pair of running shoes as a double-breasted suit and ascot. Outside of the narrow experience of playing on a very bad, very in-shape tennis team, the act of running just wasn't me.

So what happened is this: I was sitting at my desk, working like I have for years, when I made a terrible discovery. Although I was not leaning forward in any way, the distance between my belly and the edge of the desk had disappeared. The progression had been slow, but now the space was gone. There was no getting around the fact that I had made contact. I stared down and reckoned with the fact that I'd reached the point where, after a small but steady gain of one or two pounds a year, at the age of 43 I'd come to resemble precisely the men I had pitied and secretly ridiculed 20 years ago. This is the age where you either begin your decline into eventual infirmity or you don't. One day your gut touches the desk, the next day there could be heart disease, diabetes, hip replacement—who knows what else. I saw the whole thing as an inevitable progression into a kind of hell that I had the ability to stop, or at least seriously disrupt.

Running is one of the only activities that you can begin with little or no planning. You can simply stand up and begin to run. That's what I did.

It was February. My office is in an old renovated barn behind our house. Looping the barn is a small road. We had just received a foot of snow, the roads in front of the house were still unplowed, so I decided to attempt my first run in the only accessible place. I trudged down to the house, got in our truck, put it into four-wheel drive, and drove a few circles around the barn. Five times around was a tenth of a mile. From the house, I could see my wife, puzzled in the window, arms open, palms up. Wait until she sees this bad boy do 50 laps, I thought.

I pulled the truck off into a bank of snow, zippered my coat shut, pulled my hat down, tightened my boots, and stepped out into the ruts made by the tires. I took a deep breath and blew out a cloud of steam. That felt good, so I did it again. I thumped my chest. I bent at the hips and rocked back and forth in what I took to be some kind of stretch. I pinwheeled my arms and hopped a few times and did a twist left and right. All good, all good, I thought, rolling my head from side to side, shrugging my shoulders. I already felt like an athlete, albeit one in a parka and knee-high boots who hadn't yet moved an inch. I rolled my shoulders in loops thinking, Yeah, this running thing's gonna be for me—feels good already. When I couldn't think of anything else to do, I began.

Immediately, I was aware of my head. I couldn't think of how I should hold it—if I should lean forward and expose my neck or tuck my chin down and stride more upright. I tried to think about Rocky in the movies. Rocky looked great running. I tried to think about what Rocky did with his head and seemed to remember he kind of let it sway like a sack from side to side. I tried to sway my head like a sack but was pretty sure it made me look like a moron. Before I could resolve the position of my head, I became aware of the problem of my hands. I had them clenched in tight fists that seemed amateurish for some reason—like I was trying too hard. I let them go loose, but that felt too casual, and the light flopping of my fingers was vaguely uncomfortable. I tried letting them dangle loosely from slack arms, then lifted them up and held them like paws at my chest. I flattened them against my sides with my elbows sticking out the way cheerleaders run onto the field, then lowered them into my pockets and took them back out and rolled them in small circles to the rhythm of my gait, which made me feel like I was in a musical, so I stopped that right away. To get my mind off my hands, I tried to think about my stride. I remembered a cross-country coach telling my sister that you had to imagine kicking a ball with the forward movement of each foot so that the majority of the stride takes place below the knees. I tried to do this and almost fell over.

By the fifth lap around the barn, my body found its own. My boots struck small craters into the snow before me. My actual thoughts at the time: (1) Man, I could go like this for a hundred miles. (2) Why doesn't everyone do this? It's so easy! (3) I'm flying—look—I'm flying! (4) Am I having an adrenaline high? (5) I do this every day, I could eat potato chips.

By lap 10, my mood had darkened. I was shocked by how quickly my joy was taken from me. My actual thoughts by lap 10: (1) This is what a walrus feels like on land. (2) I'd rather be eating spaghetti. (3) What good is living longer if it feels like this? (4) Just because Sorels are great boots doesn't mean you can run laps in them.

By the half-mile mark, I was pumping air in and out of my lungs and didn't have a thought at all about where my head or my hands were. I was undergoing a sudden revisiting of every past injury I'd ever experienced—every twist and sprain awakened by this unprecedented level of activity. I was sure I looked like I was going through some sort of major distress and couldn't believe I was actually thinking about trying this on the road—where people could see me. My God, the man has lost his car, they'd think, and his baby is sick and needs medicine.

I managed to do just over a half mile before I no longer felt the soles of my feet and figured that I ought to stop. By this time, my wife and kids had dressed in their snow gear and made their way up to the barn to find me lying on my side with my hat pulled back and sweat rolling down my cheeks. They stood and looked at me for a moment before my wife asked if I was okay. I told her I was. She asked what I was doing. I looked up at her and held my hand out to block the sun. I swallowed hard and tried to catch my breath. I was running, I told her. "Running," she said. "Just ... running?" "Yeah," I said, sitting up, wiping my face with my hat. She looked at me, perplexed, impressed, concerned. The kids watched her face to take a cue about how they should feel.

"I'm okay, guys, your mother is right," I told them, but could hardly believe it even as I said it again myself. "I was just running. I'm fine. I know it doesn't look like it, but I am, really. I'm not hurt. I was just running."

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Born to run

This week, about a dozen cheerful souls took their first few strides (in the rain I might add) along the road to long and rewarding running careers.  As is often the case when I talk to new runners, I get asked for some advice or “pearls of wisdom” that might make the experience that much more enjoyable.  I went way back, almost two years to the day, in my blog archives, and dug this one up.

I received an email from my oldest sister today announcing that she too has taken up running. She wrote that her reason for doing so is because she was getting tired of being left out of family gatherings that more and more have been revolving around running events.

I think it's terrific that my oldest sister has made this decision and it confirms my belief that running is about so much more than sweating, hard breathing, and pounding the pavement - leave that for the athletes. In our case, it has become a real connection point for our family. Separated by miles, schedules and other commitments, running has become a common thread, keeping us together, and a force gravitating us closer to each other.

My sister asked if there was any advice we could offer her as a newbie to running. I've given it some thought, and here are my best ideas for runners just starting out, in case she happens to read this:

1. Read John Bingham's "The Courage to Start" and then read "No Need for Speed", also by Bingham;
   

2. Start easy - a walk/run approach is best to get your body ready for the new stresses it is about to experience;
   

3. Go to a good running store and get fitted for a pair of quality shoes. It's worth spending the money here - you need a comfortable ride;
   

4. Before getting started, accept that there will be bad days - forget about them;
   

5. Before getting started, accept that there will be outstanding days - remember them always; and,
   

6. Enjoy. Take in the sights, celebrate your accomplishments, no matter how small they might seem. New runners see great gains in fitness and endurance in a relatively short period of time - keep track of your workouts in a log or online so you can easily look back on how far you have come.
   

Most importantly, put one foot in front of the other and enjoy every foot-strike.

Run for your life.

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