Mom. Dad. Jamey. All dead.
My ever-faithful husband, my sister, and friends, all still very much alive, were on the course, but miles away. Even the dog, my other regular running companion, was absent—at home—probably asleep.
This left me in treacherous company—with only my mind—forever critical.
Someone in the line outside knocked. I would have to carry my heavy heart across the pavement solo.
“I’m a runner,” I whispered to my mind. Then I pulled up my panties, opened the door, and ran.
Off the Sofa and into the Ravine
Five months before my forty-ninth birthday, I slouched on the sofa in my pajamas, squinting at my laptop screen. A high school friend’s social media post read, “Call me crazy, but the running is getting to be fun!”
I remembered Kim riding horses in high school, but neither of us had been athletes then, and we certainly weren’t now.
I read on. She had begun an interval training plan to run three times a week. The website suggested alternating sixty seconds of jogging with ninety seconds of walking for a total of twenty minutes. Sixty seconds sounded almost possible.
But depression clung to me like a shroud. It was noon on a weekday. As usual, I’d just gotten up and hadn’t showered in days. The simple act of walking Morgan, our yellow Labrador, around the block often proved too difficult.
A few minutes into browsing Kim’s interval running schedule, an extra-long burst of hiccups reduced me to sobs. I cried until they passed, closed the laptop, and went back to bed.
Still, her running posts nestled like seeds in the back of my consciousness. Later that week, Kim posted, “Week one finished!” Infected by her glee, I remembered the pleasure I’d had when I’d run short distances decades before. A seed sprouted.
Around the same time, Fiona, a writer friend from London, also took up running. She loved buying “trainers” (sneakers). Her emails reminded me of my first trip to a running store, decades earlier, when I’d scoffed at the price tags to hide being intimidated by the options. Fiona also talked about how running felt and the glow after. She is younger than me, but she’s not a youngster. The seed grew.
***
Shortly before I saw Kim’s post, I’d begun to have a recurring dream. My body gently rocked as I floated down the road through Griggs Reservoir, a wooded park along the Scioto River, near our central Ohio home. My arms, bent at the elbows, swung by my sides. A breeze grazed my face. It felt like flying. The rhythm lulled me back to sleep when I woke from nightmares. There was no anxiety. I wasn’t breathing heavily. Relaxed and happy, I was just moving through the bright green world. I was dreaming of running.
***
One March weekday, inspired by the daffodils bursting through the soil of the winter flowerbeds, I returned to the running website. “This might kill you,” came the familiar voice in my head. I recalled Kim and Fiona’s smiles. Sixty seconds of jogging hadn’t killed them.
A wise part of my mind thought exercise might energize me, while a deep animal instinct tried to protect me by scoffing. “You’re old and fat. People will make fun of you and you’ll die of heart failure.” Most people have these competing voices. Mine are just louder.
Drawing strength from the flying and floating sensations of my dreams, I wrestled tube socks over my flabby calves, sweatpants across my wide hips, a long-sleeved T-shirt and hoodie over my thick belly, and a pair of trail shoes, the closest thing to running shoes I owned, onto my swollen feet. Ed, my husband, was at work, so he didn’t see my unwieldy outfit.
Morgan circled and nearly knocked me down when I opened the closet where we kept his leash. I would need his support.
I picked up a digital kitchen timer and went outside.
Most of the residents of our maple and sycamore-filled residential neighborhood were at school or work. Even if they were home, they probably weren’t looking out the windows of their 1950s ranch houses.
Still, I imagined the neighbors not only watching, but laughing if they saw me try to run. I steered the dog toward Donna Ravine, a secluded street down a hill along a creek, where the houses sit far back on wooded lots.
***
Once I felt safely hidden, I set the timer for sixty seconds and bounced tentatively in my trail shoes.
The small white timer in my sweaty hand was a welcome friend. It had carried me through years of mindfulness meditation periods and decades of the ten-minute “writing practices” I’d learned from author Natalie Goldberg. Perhaps it would serve me well again.
Morgan sniffed, peed on the newly sprouted leaves of a shrub, then stared into the distance.
“This is gonna hurt,” I told him.
My mind had replaced the floating feeling of my dreams with a movie montage. First, a day nearly two decades before when I’d pushed myself around an indoor track, gasping dusty air. Then another day when, bone tired from long hours practicing law, I’d cut a run short because I couldn’t make it up one more hill. And finally, one day, my mind decided I was through.
The dog stared up at me. He had no fear.
“What do you think, Pink?” I asked, referring to the pink tinge of his almost brown nose.
He cocked his head and perked his copper-colored ears.
I hit the timer button and began to jog.
It hurt.
Pain spread through my chest as my boobs bounced ferociously in my ancient sports bra. Due in part to medications, a healthy portion of the weight I’d gained in the past sixteen years was in my breasts. I slowed and bent my knees. This reduced the bouncing and hurt less. I wondered if it was also easier on my joints. I would later learn this was true.
In sixty seconds, the timer went off.
When I yelled, “We did it!” Morgan looked confused. I’d been jogging so slowly he hadn’t needed to break stride.
I didn’t care. I tasted victory. Pleasant memories from decades past surfaced. Running in the rain, happy and soaked, feeling tough as I plowed through puddles. Outrunning younger men. Feeling strong, young, and pretty.
But as we walk/jogged our way out of the ravine to where the homes sit closer to the road, these images of running glory faded. The windows stared at me. I turned around and jogged back down the hill, out of view.
In the safe, secluded ravine, I alternated walking and jogging for twenty minutes. The dog continued to walk no matter how fast I thought I was going. When I finished, I breathed heavily, while he barely panted. No matter. I was sweating. It had been a long time since I’d sweated from exertion and the sweat made me smile.
The walk home felt like floating. I glowed inside from pride and outside from sweat. I had run. And, I couldn’t wait to run again. But first, I needed a nap. When I lay down, I dreamed I was flying.
That evening, I emptied a can of green beans into a saucepan while Ed sautéed chicken. I said nothing about my accomplishment. I’d given up running so many times before. When the food was ready, I ate hungrily as we talked about whether to buy dogwood trees for the front yard.
I spent the next day at a coffeehouse working on the novel I was revising. As I rewrote the same sentence, I renewed my resolve not to tell anyone. That night, when I talked on the phone to my sister Amy, I did not tell her either. Besides Ed, she’s my closest confidante. Amy is eight years older than me, and my brother, Jim, is two years older than her. They parented me as much