High as a runner

Something happens when I see my running shoes. I start hearing things. Soles hitting pavement. Inhaling, exhaling. Wind, cars, dogs barking from behind a fence. Someone else’s soles, someone else’s breathing. The little beep from my watch at every mile. My iPod.

And then all I want to do is put on those shoes and head out so I can hear it for real. And so that I can hear the best sound of all: the noise in my brain (yes, that giant fluffy bundle of pink). Thoughts flowing, connecting, sorting themselves out. Or sometimes just a single thought: keep running.

Sometimes running feels like celebrating. Sometimes healing. Sometimes release. Sometimes I have to run until I feel like a normal person again. Sometimes it’s just making it to the next mile. Sometimes it’s perfectly ordinary.

And I love it.

I don’t know why some people hate it and some people love it. I didn’t ever really have to learn. But I’d understand if you didn’t believe me. I never believed that falling in love is feeling like you’ve known a stranger all your life and being sad to say goodbye at the end of a date. Until it finally happened to me about 100 years after everyone else. And I’m still waiting to believe that you can suddenly feel an overwhelming sense of ethnic identity just by visiting a country, like oh I don’t know, Asia.

But since the first time I started doing laps around the little YMCA track in college 15 years ago, I’ve never doubted this great love of running. Of course, back then, I was also adding mileage haphazardly, not running with a group of more experienced runners, and not consulting with a running coach about my form and training. Shortly after, I started having pain in my hip flexors and my shins and was advised by a health professional to drop the running.

Now, of course, I wished I’d done a little more research and learned how to get rid of/manage the pain and continued to run. But I was just recovering from an eating disorder and was afraid that I was destroying the body that I was trying to learn to respect again. Which is when I started my love affair with the elliptical trainer and every other kind of cross-training I could get my legs on.

But I’d still think about running now and then. I even ran some. A 5K here and there. But it wasn’t until the end of last year when I was spending a lot of time with runners that I found myself thinking about it even more. And cursing my right knee that had started hurting about 8 years ago (from something unrelated) and had never stopped.

Then at the very end of December, God & the Universe and I were in yet another tussle over my life. I was sad and confused and I couldn’t stop thinking about soles hitting pavement. So I just put on my shoes and ran. This time, I was running to feel like a normal person again. I figured if my knee started screaming, I’d just stop. But it didn’t. When I came back in, I felt calmer. And my knee? No worse than before.

So running is now back in my life. I had a brief 2-month hiatus due to hip flexor pain, which lit a fire under me to do all those things I didn’t do before. I joined a run club with a certified running coach who made one tiny tweak to my form and introduced me to (cue angelic music from heaven here): The Foam Roller. The result being more miles, no more hip flexor pain and incredibly, less knee pain.

And a few weeks ago, on a rare afternoon run, a lovely butterfly fluttered right into my path. I smiled, laughed out loud and thanked God & the Universe for the beautiful gift of running.