Or… On Retirement from Running
I have been running for as long as I can remember.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I raced outdoors in my neighborhood and in the school yard during recess.
In the 90s, I ran track, sprinting until I pulled a muscle late in the season during my senior year.
I took a break for a few years, then as grown up, I took up running again. I tried short distance this time. I wanted to like it, but my muscles were allergic to the effort. As in, my legs itched something awful, an indescribable hell very few people understand.
I stopped running altogether. Then started, stopped, started, and stopped again. But eventually, I tried it, and it took! Anything to fit into an old gown on short notice. This was around 2007 or so, and I’ve been running 5ks and 10ks since then. Nearly 20 years of running 10, 12 or 15 miles a week.
Until now.
Lately I’d found myself saying something I’d never said before:
“I can’t picture myself running tomorrow.”
Imagination and visualization are big with me. I see it and then I do it. I picture scenes I’m writing, conversations I’m having, dinner I’m cooking. You name it, I create the image in my mind, and then go do the thing. (I never really thought about how much this factored into my daily life until this very moment).
So there I was, in the living room the night before a scheduled run, saying, for the third time in a week, “I can’t picture it.” Yet just like the previous two runs, I went anyway.
To be honest, it was a throwaway comment. The first two times it didn’t even register that I had said it. The morning after, I had gotten up as I had hundreds of times before, and went for my run.
But last week, on my third announcement of “I can’t picture myself running tomorrow,” I finally heard myself.
Hmm. That’s interesting, I thought.
Once again, I got up and went running. But before I finished mile two of my three mile run, I up and told the wind, “I think I’m gong to retire from running.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was true. I knew it was time for a change.
I was in the mood for walking. Meandering. For pain free knees. I love aerobic exercise and cardio but maybe it was time to go back to dance or try swimming or something, anything else.
That was Valentine’s Day. And today, my birthday, I made it official. I went out for a 5k walk.
Funny enough, after several minutes of walking, I felt the desire to run a teeny bit. So I jogged a few seconds and then stopped.
And that felt good.
The unscheduled jog. The untimed, unmeasured distance. The stopping and walking with no rhyme or reason. It pleased me.
At some point, during an interesting straightaway, I jogged once more. Again, no clue how long or how far, but I stopped when I felt like it and resumed observation pace.
By the time it was all done, I had maybe four of those bursts mixed in with my walking and that felt just right.
In runner’s terms, it was more or less a Fartlek walk. The perfect speed for retirement.