The Journey of a New Runner
I peered through the fogged rectangular glass of the gymnasium door as my classmates ran past on their mile loop. “Suckers,” I thought.
I was crouched just inside the gym door, waiting until the right moment to casually re-join gym class at the end of my most hated activity, the run. There was no way I was subjecting myself to something as painful and ludicrous as running.
It turns out, however, that I was the biggest sucker of them all. Some 25 years later I’ve discovered running and the daily joy this activity has added to my life. I’m shocked, I’m appalled, and I’m loving it.
It was a very long journey to reach this moment. Once, as a young adult looking for new hobbies, I signed up for a charity 5K with zero training whatsoever. It was one of those races that allows dogs, and it was a cold and miserable Maine spring day, as they often are, and I lined up with all the people and their dogs before setting out on the longest run of my life. It became a true mental and physical battle of wills between myself and an extremely large and drooling English bulldog. He was close on my heels the entire race, and it was utterly humiliating. He would stop to drink from puddles and I’d cast nervous glances over my shoulder, jealous of his water intake while I panted down the streets. It was an absolute nightmare, and I finished the race with all of my fears and beliefs confirmed: running just wasn’t for me.
Sometime during the pandemic I started walking. My walks started getting longer and longer, and then I was easily logging 3 miles at a time, and I was finding a lot of joy in the daily movement. This was an odd feeling, and it set the stage for the moment I suddenly picked up the pace nearly five years later and actually started to run. “I could finish these three miles a lot more quickly if I just went a little faster,” I thought. And then I lifted my knees and started.
I was like a colt just birthed; reckless, ungovernable, legs jutting out in uncontrolled movements. My husband, out on his own run, found me sprinting down the road (with the “Fast and Furious” soundtrack blasting in my headphones); I was not running fast nor furiously, but it certainly felt like it. In fact, I was pretty sure I was the wind itself.
“I’m running! Look at me go!” I shouted as I barreled past him, really showing off my new running legs. I was very confident he would be extremely impressed. What more was there to it than this, anyway?
“You’re going way too fast,” he advised as I self-imploded, lungs screaming and grinning wildly. This was fun.
There was a lot to learn, and this was a different type of learning than I was used to—a joining of the brain and body that I was not accustomed to as an English professor who spent her entire life avoiding physical labor of any kind. Not only did this activity require a new kind of mental fortitude, it took a lot of consistent effort and time. But this time was becoming different than any other in my day—I looked forward to it, and it was just for me, whether it was 37 degrees and spitting cold rain, or a perfectly crisp 58 degrees with Asheville sunshine (perhaps the most ideal running conditions, in my opinion).
I started to pay more attention to my watch and I noticed something: I was getting faster. It was getting easier. I was feeling the physical effects of progress, which is something I had never felt before.
It took me six months to be able to run an entire mile without stopping, and this was quite frankly the most shocking thing that has ever happened to me. I stopped at the end of that mile and looked around, expecting a parade to explode from the side of the river trail and carry me the rest of the way. But it was just me and my own two feet, and I carried on, smiling like a freak.
I experienced the same feeling again when I finished my first 10K run. I burst into the house, expecting a bottle of champagne to explode in my sweaty face. But it was just me, silently celebrating a milestone that I never thought possible—and that’s mostly what the sport of running is. Just yourself, the pavement, and witnessing things happen that you never thought possible, with no one else there to witness it. It’s a feeling of wonder that isn’t easily achieved, which is why it’s so highly prized.
I still don’t exactly think of myself as a runner. What I’m doing isn’t pretty; there’s still a lot of walking involved and my short legs are brutally slow, despite feeling like I’m absolutely flying down the road like a Goddamned superhero. But that’s what it’s all about—that feeling of absolute freedom, cruising down the road on my own two legs, the cathedral of my lungs filling and exhaling easily in the morning air, as I do something previously unbelievable over and over again.
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