***
I didn’t know running was in our genes. My father, a tall, thin, long-legged German, looked like a marathoner. As the anchor of his high school mile-relay team, he had won the state championship, and set a record that stood for many years. Eventually, my sister gave me his medals.
My uncle on my mother’s side also ran, but he’s built with short legs and a long body. When we visit, he reminisces about his glory days as a runner. His favorite distance was the 10k (6.2 miles), which he said was, “long enough to get yourself warmed up, but not far enough to kill you.”
I was a normal-sized child, despite feeling fat. I only gained
considerable weight when, in my thirties, I went on antidepressants. I have my father’s long legs and arms, but a short body. If I had my uncle’s long torso as well, I would be six feet tall.
***
The trail shoes I’d worn during my first three weeks of training were heavy and hot. I’d need something lighter soon.
Two years before, in 2008, I’d tried to run in sandals. I’d just graduated from MFA school and had gained twenty pounds, eating over that stress combined with the deaths of my niece and mother. In the sandals, my ankle swelled to the size of a grapefruit. An urgent-care doctor said it was my weight. He echoed my self-deprecation. So, once again, I quit. But now, despite my previous swollen-ankle mishap and the fact that I still carried the weight, I thought I wanted “proper” running sandals.
I drove to the same running store I’d gone to years before. My friend then had said, “You need the right equipment.” But I’d been a starving law student and had left empty-handed. Today, I entered the store determined to buy the right equipment.
When I asked for running sandals, the young sales clerk screwed up her face. She showed me Vibram five fingers, essentially gloves for your feet. I screwed up my face. “It’s for minimalist runners,” she said.
I didn’t know what a minimalist runner was, so I asked her to suggest something else. I mentioned my previously swollen ankle, but not my weight. I looked nothing like the thin employees or other customers.
“Let me watch you walk without shoes,” she said. I walked and felt self-conscious as she studied my gait.
She also measured my foot in the Brannock device they’ve been measuring feet with since the dawn of time. “Your feet will swell when you run. Go at least a half size larger,” she said. Her tone of expertise impressed me, even though she was young enough to be my dead niece.
“Try them out in the parking lot,” she suggested. I hadn’t worn the sports bra, and, since I could barely tolerate being seen in my own neighborhood, I declined and just walked around the store.
The large, cushioned shoes felt like walking in marshmallow clown boots. “Beginning runners need more support,” she said. I’d gone in looking for sandals. These were the opposite. Having done no research, I didn’t know the running shoe trend was toward more flexible, lower-heeled shoes as an alternative to the highly cushioned and immobilizing shoes she recommended. I said I’d take them.
Form-fitting tops, stretch tights, and split shorts hung on racks around me. I hadn’t researched running clothes either, so I also didn’t know that “cotton kills,” and turned away from those and toward a wall of ankle socks in different fabrics, thicknesses, and colors. My tube socks had to go. I chose the same brand I’d used to try on the shoes. With pads under the toes and ball of the foot, and on the heel, plus a stretchy, colored material across the top, they added to the pillowy feel. I bought three pairs: aqua to match the shoes, pale pink, and black.
I’d just spent more money on running gear in one hour than I’d spent on any clothing in the last few years. When I was younger and thinner (and possibly hypomanic), I easily dropped hundreds of dollars on work clothes, but weight gain, lack of energy, and practically nonexistent self-worth had driven me out of the stores. Now, I peeked into the bag and smiled at the small bit of color on the socks. I was a serious jogger!
***
A few days later, after jogging, I had coffee with my friend Krista.
As I slid into a booth, she pointed to my workout pants and asked if I’d been exercising. While I was still depressed enough not to shower regularly, another measurement of my mental health, I hadn’t sweated enough to warrant the effort.
Krista was a few years older than me and exercised regularly. In the past, when she suggested exercise might improve my emotional well-being, I gave her the responses I used to ward off such recommendations. “I’m tired. It’s cold. I’m fat. It will ruin my knees. I don’t like exercise. I don’t have the energy.” I didn’t think of these as excuses. I thought myself incapable. There had been a day when I exercised, and that day had passed.
My attitude was changing.
“I’m jealous,” she said. She had run races and now walked her Jack Russell terrier and bicycled. Running, she said, hurt her knees.
Every story about how hard running was on the knees made me wonder if there wasn’t a better way to run. In the unlikely event that I ran longer distances, I might research it.
“You should do Race for the Cure,” Krista suggested.
“Um, no,” I said, nearly knocking over my coffee. “I’m not leaving the neighborhood.”
She added, “Races are like parties for people who exercise. Plus, you raise money for charity.”
“I’m not even sure I’ll stick with it,” I said, trying to derail her.
“I waddle,” I said. I hadn’t yet stumbled onto John Bingham’s “waddling penguin” society, but that’s how I thought I looked.
She did not understand how I’d struggled just to jog where the neighbors might look out their windows. I had friends who dressed in pink clothes and wigs to run or walk 3.1 miles to raise money for breast cancer research with twenty thousand others. I wasn’t one of them.
“I’m a private runner,” I said, remembering the pleasant intervals in the neighborhood with the dog. I’d begun to think of it as therapy.
Undeterred, Krista told me about her son’s training schedule when he’d run the Akron Marathon. He did three or four short runs during the week and a longer run on the weekend. Each week, the long run distance increased, until he was running about twenty miles. Before the race, he “tapered,” cutting back his mileage “to rest up.”
While it sounded grueling, his marathon training intrigued me. I was following my own training plan. With a plan, I don’t have to think. I just follow the schedule. This might be why I like meditation and writing practice so much. You set the timer and sit or write. No second-guessing. Hearing about her son’s training plan made my schedule more legitimate.
When I explained that I didn’t know how far I was walking and jogging, Krista also told me about a tracking website. Years ago, I used my car’s odometer to calculate how far I ran. Now, using Google Maps, the site tells how far you ran. You enter how long it took, and it calculates the pace. This seemed like more information than I needed, but I couldn’t wait to go home and try.
My first glimpse of the running community came in “Calling All Penguins (Slow Runners),” a beginner forum thread on the website active.com. Here, I discovered John Bingham, a writer for Runner’s World Magazine, whose column, “No Need for Speed,” and books encouraged runners of all types, despite slowness, awkwardness, or other limiting thoughts. He described thinking that his reflection in a store-front window made him look more like a penguin than the athlete he felt he was. The moniker stuck.
Runners