Running Away
I keep living through metaphors for motherhood, and running the wrong way through a crowd of people as they crossed the finish line was a salient one.
It (an ostrich in motion) is me (an awkward runner)
Running is my church, I once said, and then winced at how dumb I sounded. I am not a runner—or at least, I’m not a runner. I don’t do pace runs or fartleks. I’ve never consumed a gel. I can’t head out for a casual 10k and come home feeling normal. When a neighbor says they saw me running, I wince harder. Some people’s bodies are poetry when they run; mine is more of a Notes App apology: Awkward. Plodding. Red-faced.
When I compared running to religion I was thinking about Sundays, which is usually the day I reserve for my “long” run. I lace up my sneakers and worship at the altar of being completely alone for 45 minutes. I blast expletive-filled music that my kids can’t overhear and stack up the miles, usually five. Five miles is just the right distance to get to the lakeshore path and jog along Lake Michigan for a bit before I turn back around.
I always turn back around.
This is a photo of a woman running through a forest, but it’s taken at night, so you can’t see the woman. Instead, you see the comet trail of her headlamp through a clearing as she runs between spiky trees, a dense scatter of stars above her.
The woman is not me. She’s ultramarathoner Courtney Dauwalter and the photo is from the New York Times article The Woman Who Outruns the Men, 200 Miles at a Time. This picture is helpful for me to see—and it’s my laptop background, so I see it every day—because it reminds me why I run. I need the reminder, because I never want to go for a run; I want to be running. It’s an important distinction. Waking up early, unearthing the last ratty sports bra in the drawer, lacing up my shoes that desperately need replacing: it’s all a drag. It’s not until the first mile is behind me that the drag eases and the effort feels less tedious. And sometime around mile three, if I’m lucky, a runner’s high hits and I feel like I’m lifting off into the trees.
You know the feeling: the cells of your body are merging with the air around you. You become the blood pumping through your own heart and also through the heart of the stranger you run past. The sun is warming your innermost soul OR the rain is dissolving all the hard feelings you’ve ever had. It helps if you have a soundtrack. For example, sprint up a steep hill while listening to Karma Police. Turn around and run down the way you came just as Thom Yorke starts singing for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myseeeeelf. It needs to be a 60-degree spring day and you need to be a hungover 25-year-old in acute emotional distress. Tell me if you’re able to replicate it.
I’ve stared at Courtney’s photo for long enough that it now has the essential qualities of a fairy tale: a woman alone against the menacing earth and mystical sky. The light of her headlamp is a steady line at first and then the line expands as if the woman herself is radiant, as if she’s reaching a new level of consciousness or shooting into another dimension. Two little aftershocks of light hit the trees as she disappears behind them.
I too want to disappear into those trees, into Thom Yorke’s voice, into that radiant fourth dimension. When I’m running, there’s always a little voice that says keep going. But when the runner’s high hits, that voice is followed, softly, by and don’t ever come back. As I ran down a dirt road in Michigan last summer, the feeling was so strong. My promised “quick run” turned into a 5-miler and then a 6-miler. Wasn’t there a woman who went out for a run and staged her own kidnapping? Could I, perhaps, just…keep…running? I can see the headlines: “Gone Mom.” “Mom, Gone.” “Where’s Mom? I Really Need a Snack!”
I turned back around, because those snacks aren’t going to open themselves.
A couple days later I was scheduled to run a 5k. Because of a childcare snag, I could not start the race until my husband completed it. I sat with the girls as one shirtless teenage boy after another sprinted, panting and dripping sweat, across the finish line. My husband was not in that group. He followed the teenagers by about five minutes, was in fact wearing three shirts at once, and looked as though he’d just returned from a quick walk to the store. I handed our kids off to him like a baton and started my leg.
I keep living through metaphors for motherhood, and running the wrong way through a crowd of people as they crossed the finish line was a salient one. My fear of being the very last person to complete the race spurred me into a sprint.
But running that race alone was intoxicating. For 3.1 miles, I was The Woman Who Outruns the Men, 3.1 Miles At a Time. My legs were the longest legs. My lungs were the most powerful; my arms pumped at exactly the right cadence to propel me forward. The sun was shining on me, I was in the last mile of an ultramarathon, the crowds were going wild as I left the walkers with strollers in the dust!
I crossed the line and limped over to my family, about to actually perish. “There you are!” my husband said. “I ate three donuts!” my daughter said. No New York Times reporter stood by to capture my photo or write 2,000 words about me. It was a lukewarm welcome at best.
However, even months later, I still feel so proud of that race. The pre-parent me would not have started running late—she would have simply cut her losses and signed up for another race the next weekend, one that she wouldn’t have to sprint through. She wouldn’t have understood how precious her time alone is, how even a little taste of freedom can keep her satiated for weeks. She wouldn’t have needed to set the example for her daughters that their races are worth running, too. She wouldn’t have known how good it feels to run away from them and then, despite that little voice urging her forward, turn around and run back.
