Tag: running is awesome

Lose Yourself on the Trails

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I’m a creature of habit and routine. (As are we all.) The only way things work in my life is if they find a way to fit into the routine. That goes for writing, obviously (which is one reason I haven’t written much lately: because the school year is almost out and that’s basically like tax time for an accountant). But it’s true for running, too.

Any exercise routine needs … well, it needs routine if it’s going to work. You can’t just squeeze it in when you get the chance, because who ever really feels like running three miles just because? (Well, aside from lunatic runners like myself.) The routine is what keeps you honest on a day like today, when I shut off my alarm and laid my head back down instead of getting up to go run, and then 15 minutes later the guilt took over and I suited up for a couple of miles anyway. And my routine works because it’s simple and accessible: I just step out the front door and go. If it wasn’t that easy, I wouldn’t be a runner.

And I live in the suburbs, so the runs are routine, too, even if I change up my route. There’s no danger of getting lost. No chance I’ll be unable to find my way back. When you’re in town, even one that isn’t familiar to you, there are landmarks everywhere marking the safe path. Buildings. Street signs. Rusted out shopping carts in the ditch. You can see these things and construct the path that brings you back.

Which is awesome, but let’s agree, pretty boring, too.

Which is why every runner should take it to the trails every once in a while.

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I could go on about the physiological benefits to running on trails (dirt is softer, ergo easier on the legs and feet; the uneven surfaces force you to recruit more stabilizing muscles and result in a better workout; the roots and rocks in your path force you to be present and focused on what you’re doing), but that’s not why I like trails.

I could also extrapolate on the mental benefits of the trail (studies show that proximity to nature confers clearer thinking and reduced stress levels; the smog is replaced with the flowery, earthy scent of nature; and let’s not underestimate the value of not having to dodge traffic), and those are great, but they’re not my favorite thing about trails.

I like trails because you could get lost out there. Even on the well-cultivated, clear-cut trails at the parks and preserves near my house, there are side trails and detours and twists and turns not marked on any map that, were you to ignore good sense and plunge in unprepared, could turn your one-hour excursion into a two-hour one, at the very least, or a three-day-weekend surprise-camping-trip at worst. Landmarks are few and far between if they exist at all. What you’re left with is a boundless sea of green all around with a tiny ribbon of dirt that swerves off into the thicket. Not much way of telling where you’re going, nor of telling where you’ve been. One tree looks much like another, and when the canopy grows together over the top of the trail (as it does on most of the trails I frequent), you don’t even have the sun to help you navigate.

You’re lost, except for the blind trust that you’ve read the map correctly (which, let’s be honest, you probably haven’t).

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And this is the best part! Because this is when you realize that for all that humanity has tamed the world and the wilderness, there are still great stretches of it everywhere, just waiting to swallow you up. Which is — wait for it — just like writing.

You start your project with an idea. Maybe you map it out deliberately and painstakingly, or maybe you just jump in and start writing. One way or another, you take those first steps off the well-cultivated road and pretty soon it’s nothing but identical trees in every direction but for the tiny scrap of trail disappearing behind you and stretching off into more trees ahead. And your cultured, educated brain tells you that it’s not so far ahead that the trail should jerk hard back around to the right — the way back to civilization — but all of a sudden the path dips and bends off to the left.

Was that the way? Or are the woods playing tricks on you? Suddenly you’re filled with uncertainty, and you think you’re heading in the right direction, but all you really have is your hope. That, and the tiny bit of story you just wrote and the tiny bit you can see from where you stand. Every now and then you break through — the canopy parts and you can see for a stretch down the river or across the valley — but in moments, it’s all swallowed up again in the green maw of the forest.

As runners, I think we have to leave behind what we know and go get lost every once in a while. Partly for the benefits it confers, but mostly because running is one of the few sports that encourages us to enter and explore the world all around us in its natural state.

And as writers … well, I think as writers we should maybe spend more time lost than found.

Happy trails.

We Must Be Crazy

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It struck me this morning, watching my breath rise in wispy, ghostlike puffs as I was wrapped in a long-sleeved insulated shirt and a vibrant insulated hoodie (I call this color please-don’t-hit-me-with-your-car-orange), to say nothing of the track pants, thick gloves, and knit cap.

You have to be a little bit crazy to do this.

Sport, Moon, Moon Phase, Mood, Run, Silhouette, Runners

Even a casual runner like myself will have to deal with a lot in the pursuit of a bit of exercise. Here in Atlanta, that includes some truly punishing hills just about anywhere you try to go, not to mention wickedly schizophrenic weather (it was 72 degrees on Christmas day, and in the upcoming five days we’ll go from 20 degrees to 60 and back again if the weather outlets are to be believed). But wherever you do this running thing, many struggles are the same. If you run in the cities or the suburbs, there’s traffic to dodge. If you run in the country or on trails, you’ve got ticks and snakes and mosquitoes and spiderwebs to avoid.

Today it’s cold weather, and while I know that calling 22 degrees “cold” earns a snort and a snigger from some of you folks up north, it’s about as cold as the bones of this fragile Georgian can stand. I’ve got almost a dozen pieces of cold-weather gear for running, and none of it seems to put me in any sort of comfort zone. Fleece-lined gloves. Moisture-wicking hats. Shirts in all thicknesses and weights. I permutate the system, layer up, and try to adjust for the slightest fluctuation in temperature, wind, and precipitation, but it’s impossible to get it right. When I start out, the cold slices through all that and chills the bones, but once the engine gets running, suddenly I’m sweltering in all these layers and running around with the jacket undone, the sleeves rolled up, the gloves in a pocket.

And the summer. God.

When you’re a not-in-the-best-shape-of-your-life dude like me, there’s only so many layers of clothing you’re comfortable removing, even if you run in the wee hours of the morning. Then the temperature creeps up into the nineties and every step feels like stepping forward into warm Jello, the air positively gelatinous with humidity. The clothes smell of sweat even after coming through the wash. Even your feet perspire.

Then there are the injuries, and a runner without injuries is like a politician without a closet full of skeletons. The past two years, I’ve fought off nagging injuries in the calves, heels, and ankles of both feet. My wife gets horrible blisters and knee issues and, through running, discovered she actually had a broken bone in her spine (probably from gymnastics earlier in life, but unearthed by running).

Point is, running, as a whole, tends toward the unpleasant. For the most part, it isn’t a lot of fun.

Yet, pounding the pavement in the relative stillness of the early morning, watching those puffs of misty breath rise and scatter before my face, feeling the cold leaking into the soles of my feet, the tips of my fingers, the bulb of my nose, it hit me.

Despite all that the run sucked (and it did suck: I was slower than I’ve been in weeks, I felt short of breath, and my left heel was acting up again), I was still undeniably enjoying myself. I was glad I’d hauled myself out of bed, despite not having to work today. The run felt right, like an old Def Leppard t-shirt from high school or your memory-foam pillow at the end of a particularly long day.

I guess it’s not surprising that I’ve embraced such a masochistic form of exercise: you have to be maybe more than a little bit crazy to decide in your thirties that you want to be a writer, and start committing hours every day toward what most people think of as a pipe dream. Putting down your words and thoughts and the bizarre worlds that exist in your mind for others to see. Thinking about stories and narratives and conflicts and subplots when you could just as easily veg out and watch a House marathon on the weekends (man, I miss that show). Choosing that mental torture when I could just as easily not seems as indicative as anything that there’s something wrong with me.

Writer, Shadow, Man

Running and writing, two great forms of torture that taste great together!

Is this a universal truth — that the things you love cause you pain and discomfort like this? Frankly, it’s kind of bullshit. I wish I enjoyed other forms of exercise, or even better, that I didn’t care about exercise at all, but I just can’t. Nothing else floats my boat. And writing … well, maybe all this will come to nothing, but I decided two years ago that not trying was no longer acceptable, so come hell or hot Atlanta summers (which are practically synonymous, but whatever), I’m going to keep going.

We must be crazy to choose this running life, this writing life.

But upon further reflection, we’d be even crazier not to.

Misty Morning Run

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Life is stressful. At work, there are always papers to grade, meetings to attend, procedures to follow, and then, of course, there are the students. At home, there’s dinner to make (on the nights I’m there to make it), there’s kids to play with and read to and put to bed, dishes to wash, messes to clean up. (Sidenote: my wife is awesome. I don’t know how single parents do it.)

Then there’s the book; much as I love it, the work is exhausting. I mean, I always knew that writing would be hard, but there’s really no explaining how hard it is if you haven’t tried it. The hours, they pile up like bones at a hot-wing eating competition. I run laps in my head like a hamster on its wheel trying to make the story behave, and some days it feels like swimming upstream toward the maw of a grizzly bear.

Grizzly, Bear, Dangerous, Animal, Wild Life, Canada

(So close!)

But that’s why running is awesome.

Running is the reset button. Running is the vacation inside my own head. Running is taking the phone off its cradle (as if we even know what that means anymore). Running is … well, really it’s just putting one foot in front of the other for a while, maybe until you get tired or until you work up a decent sweat, but it certainly feels like more than that when you’re in the midst of it. Doesn’t matter how tired I am, or how stressed, or how sore I am; the run rejuvenates and invigorates the body and soothes the mind. There’s something meditative, transcendent even, in the repetitive motion, in the regularity of breath, in the pat-pat-pat of your soles on the pavement.

And somehow, the effect can be magnified by the surroundings; be it a breezy beach at low tide or a dusty trail through the endless green of the woods or, as was the case this morning, a starless, sleepy fog hanging low over the city, masking buildings and trees in the near distance.

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It does something to me, feeling that mist curling around the treetops, swallowing up vehicles as they sped into the grey. Like some enormous, malevolent thing hanging over everything, waiting to engulf it all like the maw of some Eldritch horror.

I’m hardly a photographer (just look at that ugly corner of the building, the lonely light fixture lurking at the side of the frame, ick), but just look at that spidery tree, frozen in the fog, its dendritic fingers dewy and grasping. Like an alien abduction in reverse.

…We don’t get a lot of fog in Atlanta.

Good morning for a run.

I Hate Everything

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I made a post — I want to say it was a month or so ago, when Christmas was right around the corner and we were staring down temperatures in the 70s here in Atlanta — complaining about the delightful weather we were having.

I found this funny at the time, because ha-ha, seasons are meaningless in this era of global warming, and isn’t it hilarious wearing tank tops in the dead of December?

But I suited up for my 5 AM run yesterday morning in track pants, long sleeved shirt, jacket, skullcap, gloves, and mask for the 20-degree weather and … it wasn’t funny anymore.

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And sure, you northerners can laugh at me. But I’m a child of the scorched southern summer, dammit. I’m a Cancer, born in the dead of the hottest season in the hottest, humidest part of the country.

I griped about the warm then, and yeah, I get to gripe about the cold now.

I hate everything.

No Geminids For You

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I ran this morning, and it was gorgeous.

But it bloody well shouldn’t have been. It’s the middle of December, for goodness’ sake. When I go out for a 5 AM run, I should be reaching for the tights (yes, male runners can wear tights, shut up), gloves and hat, not for the sleeveless tee and lightweight shorts. The temperature was in the mid 60s with just a hint of rain in the air; in fact, I got spritzed by a delightful little sprinkle here and there throughout the jaunt.

Ideal running weather, in other words. Winter runs shouldn’t be so gorgeous. You run through the winter so that you can lament the balmy, breezy runs of the fall. You run through the winter to build up your stamina so that when spring rolls around you can pull off the chocks and blow your old records away. You run through the winter so that you can feel a measure of thankfulness for the runs you endured in the ninety-degree days and eighty-degree nights of summer.

You run in the winter, in other words, to suffer, goldfinger it, not to breezily traipse through a leisurely three miles and return home, having hardly broken a sweat.

I’d say that the weather is all out of whack, but, given as I live just outside Atlanta, it would seem that the weather is functioning exactly as intended. Next week we’ll no doubt see ice on our front lawns, to be followed by another record-breaking heatwave. January will probably start off with a rain of toads and a plague of locusts before simmering down to a balmy forty degree average or so.

But when I said the weather this morning was gorgeous, that was a lie. I was hoping for a clear sky. Why? Well…

A photographer looks at the sky at night to see the annual Geminid meteor shower on the Elva Hill, in Maira Valley, near Cuneo, northern Italy on December 12, 2015.

It seems to be a function of the lovely and totally predictable and well-behaved Atlanta weather that I be deprived of witnessing any astronomical points of interest this year. A few months ago, the Supermoon was in town, and I missed it thanks to a blanket of unproductive cloud cover. About a season earlier, there was a meteor shower that I missed for the same reason. This week, the Geminid meteor shower is in full display… apparently. Of course, I wouldn’t know, because once again, there’s a sheet of clouds lying low over the entire area keeping me from seeing a damn thing.

With that luck firmly in place, during the total solar eclipse in 2017, here in Atlanta, we’ll miss it thanks to a patch of cloud that passes over right around noon.

It’ll probably still be a gorgeous day for a run.