Running Commentary

Practicing geographer in motion

I had reasons for learning to run. Geographical reasons. Multi-scalar geographical reasons—which are the best kind, as any geographer will tell you.

I jest.

I took up running because of my doctor and my advancing age. Heart health. Muscle loss. Decrepitude. She didn’t mention the last part out loud, but she didn’t need to. As far as big birthdays go, she really sold 40.

So at the ripe age of 38 I decided to become a runner. I bought shoes. I downloaded an app to track my runs. I psyched myself up for the awesomeness of exercise. I persuaded my daughter to accompany me for moral support. Decrepitude—and 40—might be coming for me, but I was going to do my best to outrun them.

Running Away From Home

I’ve now been running for about 9 years, almost every other day, unless side-lined by illness or injury—which, it turns out, is totally a thing in running. At the moment, though, I’m healthy and running four times a week, just over 5 miles a run. Over the years, I’ve had months of 4- and 5-mile runs. I’ve run on treadmills and sidewalks and country paths. I’ve had months of long runs that clock in between 7 and 11 miles. I’ve run a half marathon. I try to log every single run, so that I can monitor and compare distance and pace and routing. As a form of relaxation, sometimes I scroll through old runs to relive the glory.

I totally sound like a real runner, right?

And yet, before every single run, I wonder whether I will in fact be able to do it. Sometimes I even have to coax myself to take the first few steps. My typical salutation, departing for my morning run, is to yell out to my family, “Bye! I’m going to go try to run now!”

I also don’t really enjoy the act of running, a further sign I’m an impostor. I feel about running the way I feel about writing or public speaking. There is a moment, at the cusp of typing the first words on the page, or opening my mouth with the introduction to a talk, when I stand at the precipice of chaos.

I really do feel this way, that everything could fall apart spectacularly. Probably you are now especially curious to see me give a talk…

You may be glad to hear that, like my writing and my public speaking, most runs turn out just fine. Very occasionally they are fantastic and sometimes they are awful. Never once have I run the first few steps and given up and turned back.

I’ve given up on more papers than runs.

I do have one favorite part of running and that’s when I stop. You’re expecting me to describe the runner’s high, but that’s not where I’m going with this. No, what I love about the end of the run is that it’s over and done with and I have another 47 hours until I have to put myself through the ordeal again.

But seriously: when it can feel nigh on impossible to succeed at any aspect of my job (or parenting, or life), I love that a run—which is difficult and challenging—is scratched off my list of to-dos. It’s great to start the day with a success.

Why do I run? This was a question that came to me on a run. Lots of stuff comes to me on my runs. Resolutions to thorny emails, tricky teaching material, framing of academic papers, tweets, and now SubStack essays.

If you and I have had beef, then I’ve had an internal conversation with you on a run. And I probably slayed you with my devastatingly clear arguments.

I compiled a list of all the thoughts about running that have come to me over the past week, including the opening sentence for this essay.

Some of these thoughts are even useful.¹

Here’s a sample of what the last two weeks have dished up, on the subject of running:

The Four Horsemen of My Running Apocalypse

The evidence suggests that there is no limit to my appetite for information about the piriformis. What it likes. What makes it tighten in disgruntlement. The same holds for the iliotal band or hip flexor. I’ll include the Achilles tendon here, too, because—truly, and I don’t mean to brag—I am a top expert on the subject.

Naïve, pre-running Rachel presumed that runners are identified by their mileage and their speed. Or maybe, especially in college towns, the scantiness of their attire. However, if I’m anything to go by (which is admittedly arguable), runners can be identified first and foremost by their exhaustive and intimate familiarity with every muscle and tendon in their lower body. That and their attachment to their foam roller. Mine is visible to me now, from across my bedroom, reminding me that I am a super tightly wound person.

It’s difficult to overstate how much of my runner brain is occupied with worries about some part of my body breaking. On the positive side, I am handy with words like gastrocnemius and soleus.

Sounds of Silence

I don’t mean to be a downer. I do find occasional bliss in running, like the rare moments when my body and brain are in complete harmony with the terrain and movement feels effortless. That usually lasts about 30 seconds.

Here’s a thing I like. Wind. There’s a lot of wind here in Newcastle. Sometimes it comes from off the North Sea (which is to my east²). Sometimes it emanates from places vaguely northern and Scottish or from the West. Other times, the South. You get the idea: it’s windy here. These aren’t breezes. These are gusts that significantly impact my running times, slower for one half of the run and faster for the other.

Being buffeted by the wind isn’t so fun. That’s not what I like about it. The part I like is the silence of the tailwind. Running in the wind is noisy. When there’s a headwind, it’s all I can hear. Not the sound of my feet. Not the traffic. And then suddenly I’ll change direction and the howling is gone, replaced by nothing. I love the sounds of silence.

I also like the deafening internal noise of blood pulsing through my body. If I pause at a stoplight mid-run, it drowns out all surrounding sound and all I hear is the thunder of my pulse. Sounds sort of gross when I write it down, but there you have it.

A Strava legend that makes no sense and also a lot of places I’ve never run

There and Back Again

I have a hypothesis that there are “loop” people and “out and back” people, when it comes to running. Loop people don’t like to see the same territory twice; they want the entire run to be new. These are complicated folks with a high degree of comfort with improvisation. Loops also require additional work to estimate the exact route that will produce the desired final distance, which seems like a lot of unnecessary effort and also involves entirely too much uncertainty for my tastes. 

Out and back people run precisely half their total distance and then turn around and retrace their steps. Out and back is simpler, especially in new places. It’s also a little Type A, the ideal option for those who don’t like surprises. 

I am (mostly) an out and back person. I am especially partial to river runs, where I can follow the thread of the water and then turn around and let it lead me right back to my origin.³ I’ve run along rivers in Brisbane and Dresden and Lyon. The security blanket of this sort of route especially appeals to me when travelling—it’s hard to get lost in a new city if I have only to retrace my steps.

I’m also a person who will choose to run 10 times around a nearby park rather than brave the unknown of complicated street networks in a strange city.

Running appeals to the geographer in me, in case you hadn’t noticed. There’s the surface-level stuff, like tracking distance and plotting routes on a map. There’s also the analytical aspect. In advance of visiting a new place, I’ll look at the map and plot potential routes that maximize greenspace and minimize major roads. I’ve even chosen hotels based on proximate running opportunities. 

There’s the exploration component, which is about terrain but also people. Engaging with a place as a runner provides sensory input about built environment but also reminds me of the human component. This is especially noticeable for all the places I have opted not to run. Rabat, for example, sounded on the internet like it would be a fun place to run…until I arrived and realized the people who’d written these posts were probably men.

Lots of times I arrive at conferences with grand running intentions that fall by the wayside in the first 24 hours, when I do the 8am session + late night socializing math. The numbers don’t lie and I like 8 hours of sleep.

And then there’s the data. Running produces so much data and today’s apps are made to feed the desire for information. I can plot my efforts over time and over space. I can look at the evolution of my heart rate. Even temperature and elevation for most runs. It’s the best.

Metamorphosis

I was thinking I should say something about how running changes the body, because it does. It’s like magic. I really like that part.

The equally remarkable transformation is the gradual but inevitable mental transition from non-runner to runner if one simply persists. Every time I come back to running after a pause, I start fresh. What’s changed over the years is that I’ve learned how to get back into the rhythm and re-build my tolerance. I now understand that it’s fine to stop and walk, because it’ll all be ironed out over the weeks if I just keep at it. There’s very much a “one day at a time” element to training that is useful for all aspects of life.

Simple out and back running in Auckland

“Look out for the Runner!”

Once, several years ago, on my cool down walk after a run, I ran into a colleague and paused to make idle morning chitchat. When I excused my pink cheeks and sweaty attire by saying I’d just finished a run, he responded, “I never would have taken you for a runner.”

I know, I know.

The comment resonated with me, though, because I don’t take myself for a runner, either! Never athletic, I was the child who was chosen last for teams in P.E. class. When I evinced an interest in softball or basketball (mainstays of a rural Midwestern childhood), my mother would generally accede to my request, but would say, “OK, but you know we aren’t a very athletic family.” 

She didn’t want me to get my hopes up, I guess, that I would be any good. She was right. She still tells the story of a 5th grade basketball practice when, standing at the free throw line, my teammates yelled, “Rachel, Rachel, are you ready?” And I whimpered, “No.”

But now, every once in a while, out for a run, I’ll hear a parent warning their kid to get out of my way as I approach. Like I’m kind of a big deal. “Look out for the runner!” is pure music to my ears, even if sometimes I feel the urge to look behind me and confirm that I am, in fact, the runner in question.

A recent fitness article in the New York Times opened with, “If you run, you’re a runner.” This is a healthy—and inclusive—perspective. I’m taking the advice and working on identifying as a runner.

And while I’m peddling self-help advice, I read somewhere that the goal of running isn’t to make it fun or pleasant. It doesn’t suddenly become easy. Rather, the more we run, the more we acquire the capacity to tolerate the discomfort. I think about that a lot and am guessing it also holds for writing and public speaking, among other things.

On that note: Bye! I’m going to go try to run now!

1. Other thoughts are more like those intense moments of clarity in the middle of the night, where you are certain you’ve untangled an especially tricky problem and then in the morning you’re like, “What the fuck, brain?!”

2. See how I integrate geography into every part of the discussion?

3. omg, I’m like Theseus in the labyrinth.