This is what I get out of it

I took this picture last July while we were in the UP after I ran the Grand Island trail race. I love taking pictures out of moving cars. This is what I see and feel sometimes when I run. Like I'm in a car with the music blaring and I seriously get that twinge of nerves when I run by a cop car in Royal Oak, like I'm in a car doing something so fun it's wrong.
I took this at the Butterfyl house at the zoo-- also reminds me of why I run. Pushing myself while loving everything I see.

Mark always asks me what I get out of running, and I think about it, really try to articulate it, but always fail to really explain it. But a lot of runners can probably sympathize with this. How do you explain to someone who HATES running why you do it so often? It’s a feeling, a zone, mental and physical place, that is really hard to articulate and it’s not always fun but even then you know you love it and will again.

So, last night, after an easy, high inducing four mile fast (for me) run, I stretched in the kitchen while Mark stood at the stove, making delicious ribs. After I stretched, I got out two cups of Styrofoam ice and iced both sides of each swollen knee. Mark gaped at me and said, “See! That’s why I don’t get it and that’s why I will never run. I just don’t get why you would keep doing something where you’re always icing something after. It’s not for me.” He shook his head and went on and on about how many doctors have told him running is bad for your back, for joints, for your bones, for your skin, your toe nails, for your ability to write Haiku, etc., etc. He said he would just go to the gym, peddle the “old man bike” as he likes to call it, lift weights and then be out of there. He also doesn’t get why I would want to keep doing a form of exercise that takes so much time. “I don’t have time for some hour yoga class and then an hour or more running. That’s insane!!” He was on a roll, but I’ve heard this before.
The timing was perfect because, having just had a tremendous run, I was able to articulate it better than I ever have and so I write this here to remind myself when I’m feeling down on myself for going on, say, a two month hiatus and then thinking: “ Oh my lord, why, why can I only go .25 of a mile without my lungs getting into a wrestling match when I used to be able to run 13 miles easy? Maybe I lost my ability to run!”
(I actually told coach Al that three weeks ago. “I don’t think I can run anymore”
“Why! What happened?” He was really concerned.
“No. Nothing like that. I just think I lost the ability. I go half a mile and I’m heaving and out of breath. I just can’t go and go like I could. It’s like I just don’t know how to run anymore.”
He said that maybe I had a cold or excersize induced pnemona where your lungs get so muscular that they squeeze and then you get out of breath easier. An evil little paradox of getting stronger making you weaker. I thought about that. Even thought about puffing on an inhaler before I ran. Well, it just took running to be able to run and not nearly as long as I thought it would when I could only go .25 miles before heartattack zone. Each time I ran I could go farther and longer and faster.

So here’s what I told Mark as I very happily iced my knees (or at least a paraphrase of what I remember):

Running is an etch-a-sketch. It’s like shaking myself clean. No matter what I was obsessing about, no matter what happened at work, no matter how blasé, anxious, existentially perplexed or down I may feel before a run, running is wiping the slate clean. (I wanted him to understand so badly that I wiped my hand across the kitchen wall to show him wiping something away).
I think its chemical, the endorphins that kick out, but I also think it’s something else. It is like a drug but not like any I know. You can drink, but there are places it doesn’t reach. Running reaches to the bone—it gets right to where you need it, right to the source and just lifts you up. I guess it’s really more mental therapy for me, but which is also physical. I think and feel best when I am moving. It gets me in the now. Pragmatically, when I’m running w/ Robbie through the city, every minute or so, I have to be in the now because I have to be keenly aware of my surroundings: make sure that car doesn’t run me over, make sure Robbie doesn’t scare that family walking towards us, watch that chunk of cement jutting up where they are doing construction. Then when I am inside myself, I am thinking “don’t let my arms swing across my middle or my feet with follow, am I standing too straight am I bending too much, how is my stride? This is an awesome song!! Wow, I think I can just surge, fartelek style for as long as this song is going and then maybe I’ll just put it on repeat and keep surging. That sunset, just over the houses, oh my—thank you so much God for that sunset. That’s the most beautiful thing you have ever given me and I’m so thankful that I decided to get out of the house just at the perfect time so that I would see that sunset as I ran up this hill on Gardenia and it’s so golden now, so Goosebumps making, esp. with this clean smell of the air. I love the spring breeze as it blows across my arms. How are my arms, put them closer to my torso, swing them faster, what does the Garmen say? Oh, sweet! 9 minute mile! That’s awesome. I could run forever. I love this feeling of turning the corner at the Frenz and Son’s Hardware, running around their long brick building onto main—feels like running to a new world—like coming out of the wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. from the curving, hilly, clean, tree lined, neighborhood to a strait-away down main-- the lights and cars and stores and smells and eclectic mix of people. Love that my dog is in rhythm next to me. My dog is so awesome. I look down and he seems to be smiling as he jogs, jerking his head toward my legs every now and then to make sure he doesn’t knock into my legs or run too far from them. He’s such a good dog. He gets right behind me whenever we must weave in and out of people down busy Main. Who else has an awesome dog like this? I swear we knew each other in a past life. Ah, nice. I have now completely forgotten about my legs and arms except to remember that I have forgotten them, but I am flowing, they are flowing me down main street doing their thing while I just feel this awesome metronome feeling, like I am myself simply a flowing rhythm going down the street with my beloved dog and the night gets cooler as the sun is gone. How wonderful to feel the night around me as I run into and through it.

Okay—so those were just some of my perceptions while running. Sounds like someone on some serious THC, right? Well, just water, running, dog, and blaring music. It’s an un-drug (like the “undead”) that just gets right down in there and fixes things, puts it all in perspective. Forces me to live in the moment. And when I come back, it’s like what they hoped electro-shock therapy could do. Shocks me out of any irritation, mulling over my “need to do” list or “didn’t get done list” “or why can’t life just be” whine—all there is is me and moments and I’m refreshed (stinky, yeah, probably pretty stinky) but re-baptized to not be such a worrier and to just feel everything is in balance and what it should be.
Mark said, “So you feel like that for an hour and a little after, so what? At the end you still have your to do list, you still have stress. What about the 23 other hours of the day when you are limping around cause you sprained your ankle, or fractured your femur, or get your knees swollen? “
I thought about that too. Well, the first thing I thought to say was that you can live in an hour—that even if it’s just an hour, you are still living in that hour. “Why not spend that hour doing something that gives you such a high, that for nearly an entire hour, helps you to live right in the now and not in a selfish way but just in a this is it and this is all I need to be right now. And, I think the more I do it, the longer that deep down good feeling lasts even when I am not running.”
Mark said if it’s like drugs then it does the same thing as drugs do just masking something else in your life.
But it isn’t like that. It is healthy—unlike drugs, this may actually help me live longer and want to. It is an end. Not a means.
Yeah, with a broken back and fractured femur.
He will never let me forget that I fractured my femur just by running too much too soon.

I guess some people hate it. Some people think it’s a waste of time. Some people don’t mind it. Some people just do it to lose weight or get toned. Some people love it. Some people need it.
I think I am the last two. That’s just the way it is.
(If I wanted to lose weight I would go back to my college days and drink boat loads of de-caf coffee and smoke tons of cigarettes—I was skinnier when that was my lifestyle than I am now that I am running consistently and have these muscles on my legs)