The Familiar Dance of the Run

Ask anyone in my small town about me and I’ll wager they’ll say something along the lines of, “Oh, the runner.” It’s not just that being a running writer and editor is my work, or that I coached their kids for more than a decade, or that I co-directed the local 5K for as long — it’s also the only time many of them see me. I am the one they wave at, running on country roads or town streets, in winter snow or summer heat, morning or mid-day. It is what I do, it is who I am.

This fall, though, I’ve had to wonder if I’m still me. I’ve been injured, a damaged knee that doesn’t have a quick and easy fix, and so haven’t been running. After 43 years of hitting the roads or trails most days, it is not a minor thing.

Recently, however, I discovered that running is imbedded deeper in me than a few months respite can erase.

It had been about 12 weeks since I really went for a run. More than 6 since I took a running step. I’d been getting used to working hard on the bike — enough so that I’d started to think that I might survive as a cyclist (meaning the aerobic exercise it provides could keep from falling into deep depression, not that I’m going to start wearing lycra and shaving my legs). Mostly, I’d been walking a lot.

That day, walking north a mile, I got to the bottom of the one hill and decided that, since going uphill doesn’t hurt my knee and my doctor said I could start playing with things that don’t hurt, I’d try running up it. And I did: I drove one leg back and one knee forward, levitated and floated up the hill, my stride light and fast, my leg muscles firing and limbs moving in oh-so-familiar patterns. I got to the top and laughed, a spontaneous expression of surprise and joy.

It felt like tasting a favorite dish of Mom’s cooking years later, like driving the streets of a childhood town, like hugging a long lost friend. It felt right; this is how I move; this is what I do. I was emphatically reminded that running is not just about effort and goals and escape — as important as those are — it is this movement, so well practiced, so integral to my body. Whatever else I am, I am a runner.

On the way back home, I walked back down the hill, then turned at the bottom and ran up it again. And again I laughed at the magic.

It’s now a few weeks later, I’ve been cleared to run a bit more — and discovered that, after those few hundred yards, I’ve lost much of what makes running a joy. Within a couple of miles I find myself struggling along in a late-marathon shuffle, panting, with my heart rate pushing well past comfortable and legs complaining. I’ll give it time — I have to take it easy on my knee anyway.

I’m still getting most of my aerobic exercise on the bike. And, on foot, I’m still as much a walker as runner right now, as my mile splits will attest.

But when I get to a hill, I can’t help but fly up it. And, as my body synchronizes with the motion and I feel the familiar rhythms of this dance I know so well, I’m confident that I will always be a runner, no matter how much I can run.