Running, Part I

I've mentioned before that I was pretty much allergic to running for, oh, the first two decades or so of my life. And I still don't consider myself a runner, to be honest -- I consider myself a "runner." Yes, in quotes. Because I'm definitely not fast, and I'm probably not all that dedicated. It's just this little thing I try to do a few times a week. I do it because it's an hour or so out of my day in which no one is touching me or needing anything from me and my mind can just do whatever it wants, and as a nice little bonus, it's helping me keep my pregnancy weight off.

I started jogging several years ago after I realized that the twenty-five pounds I put on during my first two years of college weren't going to lose themselves, and I wasn't yet totally willing to give up the 4.99 medium pizzas that Dominos delivered right to the dorms on nights when dinner at the campus dining service just sounded disgusting. (Later, after I finally started going to the gym -- often dragging my roommate with me -- we also started cooking more because we had our own apartment and our own kitchen. That helped. A lot.) Surprisingly, I kind of enjoyed it. I liked listening to my favorite music and just going into (while at the same time getting out of) my own head for a little while. It turned out to be a huge stress relief for me. I also learned that I ran farther and faster when I was angry or upset, so it was a nice little coping mechanism, too. By the time I moved to Washington after college, I could run a few miles without wanting to die.

I decided to take it more seriously in the year or two before I got pregnant with Suzannah. Instead of jogging sporadically down at the boardwalk, I joined a gym with Kyanne -- which actually did motivate me to go, since I didn't want to waste my money. By the time I got pregnant in the fall of 2005, I was in better shape than I'd been since, oh, basically forever.

Of course, when I got pregnant, I gained ten pounds as soon as the pee hit the stick, and I spent the next eight months reassuring myself that I was eating for two, so it was fine to eat nothing but Clucks 'n Fries from Red Robin with a milkshake on top. (In my defense, the smell of broccoli made me want to throw up. The smell of almost everything made me want to throw up, and many of those things did make me throw up, so, for the first four months at least, I ate whatever sounded good. I'm sorry that what sounded good was often pizza and not huge pans of roasted vegetables.) Anyway, blah blah blah, I had a REALLY FABULOUS TIME gaining a lot of weight. Then I had a baby and lost, you know, nine pounds or something. Then I lost a little more, and when Suzannah was around four months old I hauled myself back to the gym. But I wasn't great about making that a regular habit. I think moms will understand -- if you have a free hour to yourself, the choices are so mind-boggling. Do you exercise? Read? Write? Clean the bathroom? Take a shower? Take a nap?

Somehow, it became easier for me to commit to jogging after I had Isaac. I lost all of my pregnancy weight in six weeks, which always seems to impress people when they hear it except a.) I still had leftover pregnancy weight from Suzannah (what? I can call it pregnancy weight four years later!) and b.) I can't take any credit for that. It was all breastfeeding and no will power, because I ate all the cupcakes and bread and alfredo sauce my little heart desired. But at that point, I thought, hey! I could start jogging again, have a little time to myself, and potentially feel really great. I made myself do it a couple of evenings a week and maybe once on the weekends (plus, I was out walking with the kids nearly every day; fresh air is one of the keys to our collective sanity). There are so, so many things I would love to do with my "free" time, but the allure of an hour with no one needing anything from me, without having to make any sort of conversation at all, was (and still is), frankly, irresistible.

I've learned that I probably run best at the gym, where I'm faced with both my actual speed and time right there on the treadmill display. It's mostly strictly work there, and if I didn't have my running music I would find it excruciatingly boring. (A month or so ago I forgot my music and almost gave up and went home; it definitely wasn't my finest workout.) My favorite places to run are outside, though: the streets around my neighborhood, some quiet and some taking me along a steady flow of traffic; the boardwalk along Puget Sound, only a few minutes from my house; long quiet stretches of highway in Montana. I still remember so clearly the afternoon I went for a jog up the highway north of Gildford when I visited my grandparents one summer. It was hot, and I can only imagine what I looked like as I huffed my way back into town. As I approached my grandparents' house, I could see my grandpa standing in the yard, shaking his head and gaping, one hand on his hip.

"What I can't figger," he hollered, "is why in the hell you'd wanna ram yer ass up through yer hips like that in this heat."

I admit it: When I run, I suffer from Acute Delusions of Grandeur. This is the danger of going into one's own head a little too much, I guess. When I run, I am Lady Gaga. I can sing, I can move (don't worry, I don't try to actually do these things -- at least not while I'm running -- but you'd better believe I am the best singer IN THE WORLD when I am in my car), and I have huge crowds eating from the palm of my hand.

In my head I become the teacher from Dangerous Minds. Jonathan Franzen takes writing advice from me. In my mind, I go back to the day in June when Matt and I stopped by Louise Erdrich's bookstore in Minneapolis (Birchbark Books -- fabulous little shop) and not only is she there but we strike up a conversation and she clearly loves my beautiful kids but she basically wants to be my best friend because we just immediately click. I am also curing cancer, and no one can believe how fast I'm running this 5k. I run with determination and grace and a quiet fury. People take my picture at the finish line and I look healthy and flushed but basically good enough to be on the cover of a magazine. My hair is tousled just slightly in that way that supermodels work for hours to achieve.

When I come gasping through the back door at home, Matt politely asks how my run went.

"It was awesome," I say. "I'm pretty sure that was my best run ever." I'm not slightly flushed; I am beet-red and pouring sweat and my hair is stuck all over my face and neck. The dog immediately busies herself slurping my legs. I try to explain how I'm expecting my Nobel Prize for Amazingness to be delivered to the front door any second, but I suspect it's hard to take me seriously. (Once, on a summer weekend retreat with a few co-workers, I went running around a huge park -- I did about three miles -- and they just hung out and watched. When I finished, one of them said, "Well, you look just awful.")

Matt smiles and says, "Cool." He might not quite understand just how amazing I have been in the last forty-five minutes, but he's probably the one human being who could actually look at this sweaty, red-faced woman with the messy pony-tail and say, "You look good." And even seem to mean it.

(I'm running my 5k tomorrow morning -- wish me luck! And again, thank you so much to those of you who donated for this very worthy cause and those of you who've been my best cheerleaders. I appreciate each and every one of you.)