Running Ruminations

For this being a running blog and all, admittedly, I haven’t talked a lot about my running in the past twelve months, much beyond the fact that I run every day. 

I think as is the case with many runners, when 2020 began, the new year (and new decade, woot) invigorated me and made me excited to do the necessary work to whittle down times and stoked to run all the races and train through all the miles with my teammates and my friends. Granted, I wasn’t planning to race as much as I did in 2019 (though the idea of repeating the PA XC series was a thought), but at the very least, I had a solid marathon schedule queued up: Big Sur, MTB, and CIM.

And, well, 2020. 

For the past almost-year, the past forty-four weeks, it has felt trivial, frivolous, offensive, irrelevant, all of it, to talk about anything but the pandemic, the election, systemic racism, mental health, health disparities, distance learning — and sweet baby Jesus, that’s to say nothing about the insurrection in DC a week ago and the impeachment proceedings there today — even here, in a space that I’ve carved out specifically to talk about running and marathoning and training and racing. Who the f— cares about a hobbyjogger’s hobbyjogs? Thousands of people here are dying. People are hurting.

All of those Very Important Issues — how else to describe them? — profoundly eclipse my usual run-nerd bantering, hands down. As I’ve talked about repeatedly last year, the whole lot of those aforementioned Very Important Issues permeate all of our collective racing, training, and running. 

Though we may prefer to think otherwise, even when we are in the throes of doing our thang of choice, of course we are still affected by everything going on in the greater world and in our local communities pertaining to any and all of the aforementioned. None of us live (or train or race or run) in a vacuum.     

It’s probably no surprise, then, that it feels a bit strange to sit down and write this running annual report, wherein I recount all that run-nerd business that’s inconsequential in the big scheme of things at any time in life to everyone who’s not me but dear lord, especially so in the year we just endured. 

You could be reading so much else that will have a more lasting impression on your life right now; that you’re choosing to read this is humbling. Frivolous as this entry may be, I’m mostly posting to help me remember the maddening absurdity and heartbreak that was 2020 and how running gave me a space, each and every day since March 9, to try to make sense of even a modicum of it all.  

I don’t know that I finished 2020 understanding it even a little bit more than I did at its outset, but I do know that running gave me the daily outlet to try, and for that, I am eternally grateful. 

It’s not so much the actual doing as it is what doing said activity does for us.  

With running, numbers are shiny and sexy, but they never tell the whole story. 

2,832 miles (distance PR), 151,759 vertical feet (elevation PR), and 439 training hours (volume PR), in 359 days (same): it’s a weird pursuit, but again, in a year that made little sense, it was one thing that did. 

For the first time in I’m-not-sure-how-long, none, zero, of my running last year was anchored in races, and I barely ran outside my ZIP code and never beyond this side of town. There was no Big Life Lesson revealed through A Really Hard Marathon Training Cycle, no A-Ha! Moment that comes in the throes of An Impossibly Hard Race. 

Very quickly early on, my running focus shifted to becoming less about destroying the PR and more along the lines of simply training for life, for my mental and physical health, as a way to mitigate stress and all my numerous feelings and thoughts surrounding everything that erupted in 2020, all the thousands of landmines that were exploding on a daily (and hourly, sometimes) basis.

No races; no destinations. 

No massive reunions or meet-ups with a huge gaggle of friends from all over, with a shared race weekend as the backdrop. 

What’s the point, then? 

And herein is where 2020 reminded me, day after day, since March 9, when so much of the state of the world feels precarious, when there is little control or certainty to speak of, when it feels profoundly easier to spiral down, sometimes doing things we love for no purpose beyond because I love to do it is enough. 

For much of the past year, it’s when I’ve gone for my daily run — usually first thing in the morning — that I’ve left home for the first and only time that day. 

For much of the past year, my runs have been the only backdrop of the day where I’ve seen and interacted with humans (in real life!) to whom I am not related and for whom I don’t have to do a single thing; I love my family intensely, and not being “needed” or feeling like I have to be “on” for +/- an hour a day is liberating.

Plus, it has been on my runs this past year where I’ve formed fun acquaintanceships that I (perhaps strangely) look forward to; SO to my “Santa” friend I’d often see in the early days of the pandemic and to my dog-walking Illini jacket amiga whom I often see near the park each morning. Never underestimate the power of a good, hearty wave. (You can take the woman outta the midwest, but you can’t take the midwest outta her).

For much of the past year, I’ve run solo or with one other person, almost always Janet or my daughters (and once, Lisa); I am so, so grateful for their friendship and for our close proximity. For my girls, with pools offline for much of the past year, their outlet of choice wasn’t feasible, yet with very little prodding or pleading from me, they both dove headfirst into 5k training because… why not. It’s there, low-hanging fruit, something to realize when it felt like little else was available.

A built up to, and completed, numerous 5ks over the course of her training cycle. G began a similar 5k training plan but was decidedly less enthusiastic about it — and quickly got derailed due to weather and air conditions in the summer and early autumn — but it has been since the pandemic began that she taught herself how to ride her bike and now enjoys going out for 8k or 10k strolls, with me running alongside her. Related: 2020 was when my nearly ten year-old BOB SE running stroller continued its journey with a new mother-runner on the other side of town. This weird, terrible year gave me so many miles together with my kids — on bike, in stroller, or on foot — and I doubt we would have had these experiences together in a “normal” year.  

For much of the past year, running meant leaving from home and figuring out a way to patch together routes that were light on vehicular traffic and people that *didn’t* include ARP, since it was closed from March through mid-June. I guess I’d have to view my Strava heat map to be sure, but I’m fairly certain that I’ve covered every single street, lane, drive, circle, avenue, and road in all of my ZIP code — and I can tell you that the name does, in fact, indicate a difference! — plus the ones immediately adjacent. I enjoyed the challenge of running on roads for elevation — Sierra, Suncrest, Mount Hamilton, and Crothers — though sharing narrow shoulders with cars is unnerving to say the least. (I’m so glad ARP has been open, save for the fire days, since June). 

Of course, the nice thing about running — and there really is so much that is nice about my hobby of choice — is that you don’t need a race to run; you don’t need an (insert distance of choice here) training cycle to run; you don’t need throngs of people with you to run; hell, you don’t even necessarily need tons of dedicated space, like a park or trail, to run. 

When it comes down to it, running is pretty easy to make into one of those barest-of-bones sports, which sure is attractive, as I relearned for the millionth time this year, when practically everything else in life feels suffocatingly, exceedingly, and irredeemably heavy, and the very last thing I want to do is make decisions about my running, the who, the where, the when, all that stuff. 

Shoes on and go: that’s enough.  

Doing it for the joy, the daily ritual, the meditation, the silence, and the simplicity: that’s enough. 

In a year where so much has felt taken away, my daily lollygagging all over the northeast side has given, and given again, so much to me.

Nothing fancy, “just” running. 

“Just” miles and hills. 

“Just” a lot of one foot in front of the other, most every day this year, because it was one of the singular things that I could control and one of the only things that made sense.

I wrote in my ‘19 entry that “Doing the work, even when we don’t want to, matters. The passage and rapidity of time right now is dizzying. I have goals and ideas for 2020, but I think recent experience has taught me that the best way to proceed is with an open heart and mind to whatever transpires … Your guess is as good as mine.” 

I won’t pretend like I have any idea of what ‘21 will bring or quite frankly, that I have any idea of what I want to accomplish this year. 

At the very least, I know the basic stuff works, and makes sense, when precious little does. 

Count me in for more of it.