The Exercise I Hate the Least

Recently I completed the “inaugural, first-ever” Malibu half marathon. I say completed, but I walked a lot during the second half. I have not trained on hills in more than a year, and boy, are there hills on the Pacific Coast Highway! I’ve decided my main problem that day was (Insert smarty-pants physiological sounding rationale here).

After the Malibu half, standing in the ocean.

After the Malibu run was over and the leg cramps subsided, I realized that I have done four half marathons in 2009. This is a guy who wouldn’t run for the bus five years ago.

Malibu was the worst run of the year, and I posted a very bad time. I wondered what the heck I was doing it for. So I dug up a piece I wrote for my first running coach to remind myself of …

How I Became an (un)Competitive Runner, or Why I Have Four Pair of the Same Sneakers in My Closet and Will Soon Buy a Fifth

I started running in February 2006. My goals were to lose weight and see if there was some sort of activity I could stand doing for the next ten years. (I had recently turned 40—and even more recently, 42.) I was living in Minnesota—Minneapolis on the weekends and Duluth during the week.

I thought I might be able to jog a quarter of a mile. It took me three tries to run that far without walking. I ran for about six weeks, then life intervened, and I took about six weeks off.

My log starts up again in June 2006, and by that time I was up to 3 miles in 45 minutes. I was pissed that I didn’t lose any weight. I swear someone promised me that running would make me taller! But I could see and feel that my body was changing. On the other hand, I wasn’t getting any faster.

In July, my relationship ended after thirteen years—without much rancor or many recriminations. I started spending more of my time in Duluth, which has a great running community, some killer hills, and a world-class event, Grandma’s marathon.

I ran my first 5K in September of that year. The Duluth Gay Pride fun run. It wasn’t fun. It took me about 31 minutes, so my time had improved over the summer. In early September I was at the same weight as in May. I didn’t start losing weight until October, and in the following six months lost about 10 pounds. I was feeling better, healthier, and better about myself.

Trail running is a big deal Duluth, with all the young outdoorsy hipsters doing it. I was no longer young, had never been hip, and sure wasn’t outdoorsy, but I wanted to hang out with them. So I signed up for a race called “Bangin’ in the Brush.” It marks the end of the season for organized outdoor runs. At 6.6K it still seemed like a long distance. It wasn’t fun. I walked much of it. It was raining. It was not fun. I did it in 83 minutes. At the end met Katie, an experienced Duluth runner who would become my coach.

Soon after that I developed plantars faciaitis. That was not fun. (Sensing the theme yet?) It hurt. For about six weeks every morning when I got up the pain would shoot from my right sole up my leg. I missed some running in late October, when the Duluth weather can be alternately nasty and wonderful. I found that I actually missed the running.

Sometime in there I ran a full marathon. Dumb.

People often say that your body starts changing around age forty. You’ll need bifocals soon, your hair is thinning. For me, cholesterol tests have shown that I could be “pre-diabetic.” My blood pressure increased seemingly overnight to the higher end of normal. High blood pressure and diabetes run in my family, so I take the warning signs seriously. I have what I consider to be a stressful job—maybe it’s just annoying.

So, the point is, I’m running to try to get healthier and stay healthy. I don’t consider myself competitive. I have always disliked competitive sports. I don’t run distances to prove anything to anyone or myself. I do it so that I keep up with the training. I think of running as something I can do alone or with a group, indoors or out. I have met a lot of great people through running: many in Duluth, some in Palm Springs. Sometimes I enjoy it, and sometimes when I don’t do it, I miss it.

 The Fool on the Hill. Nice legs though, eh?

Oh, and before I left my last job, I got a couple of faculty members to start a little event. The Lake Superior College Thrill on the Hill Fund Run: it’s a 10K half-road half-trail event in May, about six weeks before Grandma’s Marathon. The first year, we had around 100 runners. I was one of them. It was kind of fun.

It’s now in it’s fourth year. That makes me happy.