The Joy of Running

Really? Oh, Come On!

November 24, 2024. Third Place in Age Group, Turkey Trot, Mamaroneck, NY.

I’ve been running for about 25 years, usually with my dog, and I’ve never much liked it. Sure, it’s great to be out in nature early in the morning, especially in nice weather. Swans and ducks and reeds and trees: it’s all quite wonderful. But running itself is monotonous and tedious. I don’t like breathing hard, which is the whole point, and, despite a clean bill of health, I worry that one day I’ll breathe too hard and my heart will stop and I’ll collapse to the ground. I run with an ID on a chain around my neck in case that should happen.

I have never experienced runners’ high, perhaps because I’ve never run more than a few miles. My idea of runners’ high is a joint when I’m home from a 5k race, such as last Sunday’s Turkey Trot in Mamaroneck. So I marvel at others’ enthusiasm for running.

My husband, a triathlete, will run 16 miles in a national duathlon next month, and he gets restless if he misses a run. Karen, a younger neighbor who started running the same year I did, has now run 500 marathons, cris-crossing the United States with her husband, a fellow marathon devote. Their wedding ceremony was held during a marathon. Another neighbor, Cheryl, prefers to do her marathons abroad and has now done a marathon on every continent. I have to believe that these people like running, but I can’t quite understand it.  

Why, then, do I do it year-round every weekday morning? Because it’s an efficient way to keep fit. I’d have to walk the dog for 15 minutes anyway: with an additional 10 minutes, we can both run in a local park by the water and get in some aerobic exercise. At twelve, he needs it as much as I do. And one of us will thoroughly enjoy it.

Since that someone isn’t going to be me, I have to be inflexible about running every single weekday morning—otherwise I’d always find some reason or another not to do it. I don’t run when I’m sick or when there’s ice on the ground. Otherwise, if it’s a weekday, I get up and run. I run in 8-degree weather and in 80-degree weather. I run in the rain, and I run in the snow. My mantra is: “No bad weather, just bad gear.” I have a weather chart taped to my closet, telling me which layers to wear at what temperatures and whether or not I need gloves.

Do I run at Christmas? Yes. On my birthday? Especially on my birthday, when I celebrate being able to run at all at this point in my life. Because I started running at around 50 and I run mainly on turf, my knees are still in pretty good shape. My aim is to run a 5k at 80. I’ll no longer be placing in my age group, because those young whippersnappers of 70 and 71 will be beating me. (The oldest age group is 70+.) Hey, I’ll be happy just to get a finisher’s medal!

I ran my first race thirty miles from my house, because I didn’t want anyone to learn how old I was and how slow I was. I figured I might well finish dead last, so I ran under my married name, which I have never used for any other purpose.

My husband trained me for this race: 3 mornings a week for 4 weeks before work. I wondered how he would motivate a reluctant runner like me—and how I’d react to being coached by him. We started on a Monday, when he ran 5k with me to establish a baseline speed. As I huffed along the to-me challenging distance, I realized that after Mark’s 14-mile run earlier that morning, this was his “cool-down.”  After we finally stopped, he looked at his watch and read out a time. I was even slower than I’d thought.  

On Wednesday we went to the track.  For twenty years I’d lived a mile from the high school track, and I’d never seen it before.  It was a huge orange oval, baking in the sun, and I was discouraged to learn the laps were a mere quarter-mile. I was very winded when I finished the fourth lap, and I fell theatrically to the ground. On Friday we did intervals in the park: quarter-miles as fast as I could go with a 2-minute recovery period.  Running fast was torture. When my time didn’t improve on the second quarter-mile, my eyes welled with rage and frustration. 

I whined and complained. I was an obnoxious student, in part to punish him. It was his idea, after all, that I sign up for the race along with him. Why had I agreed to this public humiliation?

The second Monday, hot and bored a mile into the weekly long run, I realized that the faster I ran, the sooner the run would be over. I shifted to another gear.

“What happened midway through the run?” Mark asked later. “You began surging forward.”

I looked at his eager face and realized I couldn’t be fully candid. “I just felt this urge to go faster. Maybe I got a second wind.”

The big day arrived, and we drove up to Fairfield. I felt a fear and excitement that I hadn’t expected. Stage fright?

This did not help my breathing, and for the first five minutes of the run I was very uncomfortable. Then, somehow, I “found my breath” and ran my race. I had decided that I would always run, no matter how slowly, until the finish line. And that’s what I did: I never walked. There were two or three runners at my speed, and we’d pass each other and fall back until the very end.

As it turned out, I was not dead last.  Hundreds of runners came in after me. Soon, the organizers posted the race results, and Mark went up to have a look.  He came back with a huge smile and said, “You placed third in your age group!”

“What?” A thrill rippled through me.

“You got a personal record as well,” said Mark, who knew my times better than I did.

I cannot deny the elation, but it was the excitement of winning (even third place in my age group), not running. The race director called my (married) name, and I collected my hardware.

We walked back to the car.  I saw that I might never understand Mark’s passion for running, but perhaps it didn’t matter. Surely there were things about me he would never fathom. We got into the car. As we started home, Mark tapped the shiny statuette I was still gripping proudly.  “You know what this means?” he asked. 

I shook my head.

He put his warm hand on my knee and said, “Now you’re my trophy wife.”