THE SECOND TIME AROUND

His first run sidelined him for two weeks. Getting out again required a new approach.

By Marc Parent, Runner’s World

RUNNER’S WORLD, October 2008

The only thing worse than being overweight and out of shape is being overweight, out of shape, and sore. The very first run of your life leaves you the next day with the same body, only worse. Friday, you could not touch your toes. You get a wild idea on Saturday and take your first run ever. On Sunday, you can't touch your toes and you can't get out of bed. I had imagined running would make my body like steel--but hard like steel, not stiff like steel.

I could hear my wife down in the kitchen, prepping our kids for my entrance. "Don't anyone make fun of him," she said as I walked backward down the stairs. You know you've been up to trouble when the day after it's easier to do something backward. I slowly crossed the living room without the kids cracking a smile. After watching me lower into a chair at the table, they asked a fair question. They wanted to know if I was sick. I told them I was fine--just the effects of yesterday's run. My first run. All three-quarter miles of it. Through the snow, in boots.

It was the boots that did me in. My left ankle, anyway. I was laid up for the next two weeks. If they're ever involved in a story about running where an injury occurs, always blame the boots.

On the morning of my second run, the thermometer read 16°F. I could have waited for a warmer day, but two weeks seemed like a long time between runs and no way to begin something. The idea was to attack my sloth with running the same way you attack an infection with antibiotics: through consistent, high-dose intensity. I had planned to run every day for a couple of weeks and then even out into a steady, athletic, every other day. As it turned out, I had only inoculated my sloth. One run made my body ache and pinned me to the couch. One run gave me plenty of reason to indulge the inner voice that says, See how you feel, you punk? Running isn't good for you. My inner voice, by the way, sounds like Burgess Meredith and burps potato chips and beer.

I decided all I really had to do was get out there again. Run number two wouldn't have to cover a long distance and it wouldn't have to take a long time. If I could get out the door and leave the house behind under the thinnest guise of running, I could call it a success. As I got ready to leave, I realized it's not the first but the second run that marks a milestone. The first run only has to occur to you. The second run leaves no room for doubt that you are actually attempting something. You don't know what it is yet, but it's real, and it's deep, and it hurts your ankles.

Even if I was psychologically prepared to run, I still had a ways to go in a physical sense. I replaced the boots with a blown-out pair of green stained sneakers from the basement that I use for mowing the lawn. I resurrected some old college sweats from a box in the attic. They were a little short, and a little tight. I had to tuck in my T-shirt and pull my tube socks high just to get the coverage. Over that I threw on a jacket and zipped it up to my nose. I grabbed one of my kids' stocking caps from the porch and stretched it on. I had a fancy pair of leather gloves I'd just bought for skiing, but not wanting to sweat those up, I grabbed another pair of tube socks and drew them over my fists.

I stepped out the door and braced against the cold and clapped the socks together and hopped in place and felt totally hard-core. "I am so hard-core!" I shouted to my wife and kids who were watching me through the door window. I gave a thumbs-up under the sock. My wife cracked the door and leaned out. "What's that?" she said. "I am so hard-core," I said again, but the collar of the jacket muffled my voice. She motioned for me to pull it down, but I only waved her off. The more times you say you are so hard-core, the less hard-core you become. I had to save something for the run.

I trotted down the driveway and turned onto the road and settled into an easy lope. The sun burned cold through the crisp air and played brightly against the morning crystals clinging to the branches of passing trees. I was immediately euphoric--magically lifted from the chest, upward and forward, and had only to swing my legs below to keep going. The road, stained white with salt, stretched out flat and long before me, seeming like nothing short of an invitation to a better life. I remembered from my first run how fleeting these good feelings were, and I tried to take them in to use the momentum to get me through the crush of exhaustion that would follow.

At the half-mile mark, I turned without stopping and headed home. The old rubber of my sneakers, having frozen solid, click-clacked underfoot like dress shoes. I unzipped the jacket to my chest, and I'd like to say I wasn't chuffing along with the racket of a steam engine, but then I'd have to explain why the birds in the treetops took to the sky as I passed beneath.

The whole way out, I had been looking up and out. Now on the way back, I was hunched over with my eyes locked to the tar. I glanced at my shadow to the left and the thought that flashed through my head was: Someone tell that poor jerk to stop before he kills himself. I was a dark, rolling Sasquatch of a figure, stabbing my arms out in front of me as I shuffled forward. I imagined the spectacle I'd present to anyone unlucky enough to catch a glimpse of me as I passed--the children I would frighten, the questions it would make them ask. Tough questions like Why is the man running in the freezing cold with socks on his hands?

When the local delivery-truck man drove past and threw a giant thumbs-up to the windshield, I knew I must really look bad. You give a thumbs-up to soften the blow of defeat. Thumbs-up is code for "not a chance." Lance Armstrong doesn't get a thumbs-up. He gets slack-jawed wonder or, even better, a fist pump. Celine Dion changing a tire: thumbs-up. Danica Patrick changing a tire: fist pump. Barack Obama at the bowling alley; John McCain on SNL: thumbs-up on both counts. The driver of the only other vehicle that passed leaned into the windshield with a big smile and flashed me another thumbs-up. Two thumbs-up in less than a mile. That ain't easy.

By the time I reached our driveway, my legs felt like granite. A stitch wrapped around my left ankle like a thin wire noose. My jacket was opened, the hat was in my pocket, and the socks were off. I was panting and sweating and limping as I walked up to the house to the sound of my wife and kids clapping. "You are so hard-core!" my wife cheered. "How far?" the kids shouted from the window. I bent at the waist and put my hands to my knees, looked up, and smiled. "One mile," I said, and could hardly believe it, even with the words in my mouth.

One whole mile. 

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The monster within

John Bingham wrote,

“For many of us, running releases a primal element of ourselves that we didn’t know existed.  It seems like once we let that monster out, it wants to take over.” 

I couldn’t agree more, and that got me thinking, just what exactly does it mean to be a runner?

When answering this question, some would immediately analyze pace, distance, miles, years, even "seriousness."  Not me.

To me a runner is someone, who at some point decided he wanted better, he wanted more.  Whether that was a weight-loss goal, a “get healthier” goal, or a just “get-out-of-the-house” goal, he wanted to change his life.  Runners are marked by a conquering attitude  and a core belief that we can always get better, do more, raise our bars so to speak, and that raising our bars is a worthwhile quest, not just on the streets, but on the road of life as well.

Most runners start out the same way, with the same goal, something like completing a 5-K road race.  Once that’s done, the races become more frequent, the distances become greater.  And at some point along the way, it becomes clear that there is very little in life that we cannot accomplish, there is no finish line we cannot reach.  And the more we run, the more this lesson is taught to us.  We see little inclines in the road ahead and remember a time when that was the steepest of hills.  Suddenly the most challenging moments in our lives become quite manageable, they become quite “climb-able”.

Being a runner spills over onto those around us.  As runners, we become an inspiration the very first day we lace-up our sneakers and head outside.  And we all have an “Aunt Betty” who doesn’t quite get it, but she’s proud of us, she’s inspired by us, and when we’re not around, she tells someone, anyone who will listen, about our latest running accomplishment, our latest finish line.

Being a runner means facing it head-on, never backing away.  We want more for ourselves, we want to go farther, we want to see just how far we can go. We never quit.  Like all of our life experiences, some of our runs leave us wanting more, some humble us, but these leave us wanting more as well.  There’s a lesson in each foot-strike.  Runners are in-tune -- they learn those lessons, prepare, and overcome.  They endure and push through.  Running is like life; we prepare for the road ahead, but we turn around sometimes and see how far we’ve come. 

Celebrate!  We’re runners.  We’ve awoken the monster within and let him out.

Run for your life.

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