Running For My Life

This spring marks a major milestone in my life. It has been 10 years since I joined the ranks of runners, those nutty souls who brave wind and rain and cold, pounding the pavement just to break a sweat (and keep sane.)

I was late coming to this madness, well into midlife before the running bug got hold of me. It wasn’t as if I’d never been active. As a child I took swim lessons and diving, modern dance and ballet. Mostly I did the kind of non-structured activity—i.e. play—more popular back in the old days. I rode my red Schwinn around our cul-de-sac, and played kick-the-can, hide and seek and four square with the neighborhood kids from dawn till dusk.

Though active, I was never a real athlete. While I made my eighth-grade basketball team, I spent all but a few minutes of the entire season sitting on the bench. When I think about it, my stint as a bench warmer was the beginning of my more-or-less sedentary lifestyle that carried into adulthood.

I made meager attempts at establishing an exercise routine. In college, I joined a group of friends on weekend runs around the reservoir near Boston College. That lasted a few weeks. Senior year, my roommates and I took a jazz dance class. After some initial self-consciousness—it was hard dancing in front of a wall-sized mirror wearing a body-hugging leotard—I actually enjoyed it. Jazz dance, though, was not something I continued on my own, so after the class ended I reverted to my slothful ways.

In the early ‘80s I wore my Flashdance outfit, complete with white Reeboks and leg warmers, for my twice-a-week aerobics class. I jumped and kicked and sweated and twirled to the tunes of Wham. I felt the Jane Fonda burn. That routine lasted a few months.

Years later after the birth of my second child, I finally reached a day of reckoning. I knew I had to do something to get in shape. I began by walking—not the arm-pumping, power crazed sort—but the old-fashioned kind, one foot in front of the other. I’d finally found a routine I could stick with, and for years I was fairly consistent, walking several times a week. One day out of the blue, I persuaded myself to run to a tree in the distance. I walked for a few minutes and then ran to the next tree. By the third day of my walk-run routine, I was running three miles without stopping.

Once I had some running success, I actually enjoyed it. I felt energized, fit. Unlike all my previous attempts at exercise, running didn’t feel like a chore. It had become a part of my life. A few months later, I ran my first 5K race, and ran several 10Ks after that. Four years later I trained with a group of runners for the Boston Marathon raising money for a community mental health center.

Since I was sidelined with a knee injury six weeks before the race, the longest training run I was able to complete was 16 miles. When I stood at the starting line on Marathon Monday I hoped to run a few miles while taking in the excitement and cheers of the crowd. Somehow I managed to finish—a mind over matter thing, I suppose.

Though I’ll probably never run another marathon, I haven’t ruled out some shorter distance races in the future. Mostly I just feel lucky to have found a physical activity that I love. On cold or wet or oppressively humid days, I sometimes have to talk myself into getting out the door. I usually manage to do it, especially when I know my running partner is waiting for me. I run for all kinds of reasons—my health and my heart and my head. Mostly, I run for my life. Sometimes I regret all I missed out on in my younger, sedentary days. But being a late bloomer has its advantages. Spared from years of pounding the pavement, I may just have another thirty years of running left in me.

(This column was originally published on townonline.com April, 2007)