I ran today for the first time in, well, let’s say “a while.” And as much as I’d like to say it felt great to be out there running again, I actually felt a bit like C-3PO…if he was running underwater. I was stiff, slow, and out of breath right from the get-go. I might as well have been yelling, “Master Luke, Master Luke!” over and over as I huffed and hobbled my way down the street.
I first started running about 20 years ago, shortly after college. It was a passion of mine for a time, but let’s be clear; I was never an Olympic hopeful or anything close to that. I was just a guy who enjoyed running and did it for the physical and mental health benefits. I have run a few marathons over the years – New York once and Chicago twice – plus a slew of 10 milers, 10k’s, and 5k’s. I kept up with it into my late 30’s, and then it just got away from me. Once the kids came along (I have two; a brilliant, sensitive, sweet son, and his zany, hilarious, beautiful, sharp-as-a-tack little sister), and the career got to a point where the hours I put in went way up (even as my enjoyment and interest levels went down), I suddenly had plenty of excuses to not run. Certainly enough excuses to convince myself that I didn’t have the time to train for marathons anymore, or even a 10 miler. And so I gave it up. Not as a conscious choice; it just sort of happened.
When I was young; high school and college age, I essentially had the metabolism of a hummingbird. In college I could eat Burger King for breakfast, Taco Bell for lunch, and KFC for dinner, and not only would I feel fine the next day, I could repeat that same culinary cycle over and over and never gain a pound. But then I hit my mid-20’s, and that same garbage food started sticking to me. Not only would I gain a pound (or two, or three…) but I could see those pounds on my body. I could physically see the new weight on my sides and in my face. I look like Ben Roethlisberger in some old photos; I have absolutely no jaw line whatsoever. (I should mention for clarity that I’m almost a foot shorter than Big Ben, and also not a multi-millionaire professional athlete. But I digress.)
I was probably three years removed from college when some buddies and I went to the beach in or around Newport, Rhode Island (I was living in Boston at the time). That was when I had my epiphany and realized my days as a human hummingbird were over. The guys who were in their late teens and early 20’s on that beach looked way better than my friends and I did. We had let ourselves go. Not on purpose, aging just snuck up on us. Who thinks about aging in their 20’s anyway? I certainly didn’t, but more importantly the girls on that beach weren’t giving short Ben Roethlisberger the time of day. So that’s when I started running. It was for the girls, of course.
About a year and a half later, I ran my first marathon: New York. The New York City Marathon, the crème de la crème of marathons (to this native New Yorker anyway), that was my first. I had entered the lottery the winter prior, and didn’t get a spot. I was disappointed, but not shocked. The odds of getting a spot in the NYC Marathon through the lottery are something like 1-in-6. Not great. But then a few weeks later, I got a letter that said, to paraphrase, “yeah so since it’s 2002 and lots of people are still understandably freaked out about coming to NYC because of 9/11, we have way fewer runners than we thought we would, so if you still want to run in the Marathon let us know because we have lots of spots available.” I was in. I ran it in about 4 hours and 20 minutes. Not terrible for a first time marathoner.
In the decade-plus that followed, I ran races of all shapes and sizes, in Boston, Chicago, D.C., and New York. And then in my late 30’s I just stopped. I still wanted to be a runner. I just wasn’t doing it as much anymore. I even had a race or two that I signed up for and then just no-showed. Nothing terrible happened; there was no catastrophic injury to blame (that would be way cooler). It was just kids and work and life. Easy excuses, and so I stopped running.
Getting Back Into Running
I haven’t crossed a finish line in almost 5 years, and I haven’t run any race further than a 10k in over a decade. Not running is much easier than running, but I’m tired of the easy excuses. I need to get back to a finish line at some point soon. I stood up this blog to keep me honest, to make a public declaration that I’m going to become a runner again (with ”public” in this context being more of a psychological thing, rather than an actual “in the town square” type of thing, since no one is reading this blog but me, but still). And I don’t mean some 5k fun run that I huff my way way through without training for it. I mean real running. Mileage. A 10-miler to start, then a half, then a full. Maybe even my first (rubs temples) – oy – triathlon. We’ll see. Either way, no more excuses. Time to get back to the finish line.
