The trick is to keep breathing

The smell of lilacs and rain made me cancel my gym membership.

I've been running later in the evenings lately; when Matt gets home from work there is still plenty of light. I don't think anything clears my head better than a jog through the quiet streets of my neighborhood. The area in which I live is thick with trees and doesn't get much traffic, relatively speaking, and the air has been intoxicatingly full of spring these past few weeks. When I really feel like pushing myself there's a hill I tackle on the last mile or so of my run, depending which route I take, and the reward is not only a satisfying burn in my legs but the scent of lilac bushes growing thick along the sidewalk. If I stop to pause anywhere, it's here -- ostensibly to flip through the selections on my little music player, to find the best songs to power me through the last leg of my workout, but really it's to spend a few moments breathing in the scent of those lilacs.

I nearly skipped my run on Friday evening. A light rain was falling, and Matt was cooking dinner, and it would have been awfully cozy to stay inside and put on sweats and just skip straight to sipping wine and anticipating the weekend. At the same time, the air was so quiet and still outside, and the promise of forty minutes of solitude, of fresh air and soft grey light, led me to lace up my running shoes, blow kisses to my family, and head out the door. The wine would wait.

(I think I like writing and running for the very same reasons: it just feels so good when I stop. But there's always a moment, after the initial resistance, after all the excuses, after the slow start, when something catches -- my breathe, the pen, the keyboard, the page -- and I fall in, and suddenly I'm not even really there anymore, I'm just movement. Miles are run and words are written, and they might be slow and clunky, but something really good is happening to my body and my brain and so, despite the awkwardness/slowness/belief that I'm not really a runner and my writing is just a total sham, I continue to trust the process.)

Several months ago the gym I went to rather grudgingly for nearly eight years closed, and our memberships were transferred to a bright and shiny new gym much farther from our house. I was not at all pleased about this, because I've learned something about myself in the last year-and-a-half of jogging fairly regularly a few times a week:

I hate the gym.

And it's not that I hate working out. I mean, I don't always want to do it, of course, but I always feel great when I do. Even when I go to the gym and run on a treadmill. When I ran a few miles and then hopped on the elliptical for awhile afterwards, I'd go home feeling all the same adrenaline highs I feel anywhere else. But after Isaac was born and I started making running a conscious part of my Weekly Sanity Rituals, I realized that what really felt good to me was running outside, breathing fresh air and feeling the pulse of the world around me. I needed to be going somewhere. I needed to be able to choose a different street, a different hill. Sometimes I even drive a few minutes to the boardwalk and run along the water, which is arguably not much more interesting than jogging on a treadmill except that the boardwalk can be an interesting mix of bustle and solitude, of tranquility and energy, depending on how many people are out, on whether or not the tide is in and the water is slapping the boards underneath my feet or whether I can go and walk on the sand if I choose.

I guess, in the end, it's that going to the gym felt like work. Good work, to be sure, healthy work, but work. It was a total drudge for me. And I realized that there was just no way I would be motivated to drive fifteen more minutes to get to the shiny new gym clear across town when I was going to the one near my house once a week at the most. Matt bought me new outdoor running gear last fall, and unless it's just pouring, or our sidewalks are buried in snow (which doesn't happen much here), I'll happily run all winter long outside.

I think what I love about running outside is not so much that I can pat myself on the back for getting in a good workout; it's more about finding a space in my day in which I can be truly present. I'm not distracted by people on machines a few inches away (which always makes me feel stupidly competitive); I'm just breathing, letting my thoughts go where they will, and finding my quiet center. Last week I posted this as my Facebook status:

When Isaac was a newborn, 7:00 or so was his "witching hour" every night -- he fussed and fussed for awhile, just processing all the crazy new things he had to absorb. It occurs to me that my urge to jog in the evening is the same thing; I can run in the sweet evening air and let all my crazy thoughts rattle around in my head before they finally fall out on the street somewhere, or I can sit in my house and fuss for awhile. And let's be honest, no one wants to see that.

This is probably why running "works" better for me in the evening. Saturday morning is a much more convenient time, but I'd much rather drink coffee and eat waffles and play with the kids. Letting the stress of the day -- even just ordinary stress, ordinary stuff, nothing earth-shattering or horrible -- build up a bit drives my desire to get out, to move, to let it go, to breathe, to find my way quietly back to myself.

And so we quit the gym.

It was just after a cool, lilac-scented run a week or so ago that I burst through the back door into the noisy warmth of my kitchen, sweaty, spent, a little more clear-headed and able to approach the chaos of dishes in the sink and trains on the floor and the exuberance of my children (who just get louder and louder the closer we get to bedtime; why is that?) with patience and good humor. I appreciated the contrast, even, and the fact that this blessing of solitude exists literally right outside my front door, that these moments of serenity -- however fleeting they might be -- are moments I won't find on a treadmill. I suggested to Matt that we stop kidding ourselves with the "Well, we should probably try the new gym a few times" and go ahead and admit that we just weren't going to do it, so therefore we should stop paying the membership fee even if it was such a great deal. He agreed. I might miss the treadmill in the dark of winter, when it's tougher to get outside in daylight hours, when I'm feeling trapped by weather, but I've also learned I'm tougher to keep inside than I realized -- so I think I'll be okay.