Things I Hate About Running
- The way I look afterwards.
- Fucking gnats.
- My legs hurt all the time. It’s my own fault, obviously, for running five days a week. I’m building new muscle, too, which is kind of a novelty, but I think a lot of it is the fact that I’m running on concrete instead of grass. I wish there were something I could do about that. I am alone in my circle of acquaintances in that I’ve had good knees for most of my life, and I’d rather not lose them now.
- Uphills.
- Forgetting my towel for my shower afterwards. I’ve done it so frequently now that I finally taped a sign to the bathroom door to remind me. Running about naked is all well and good, but who wants to drip all over the linoleum?
Things I Love About Running
- The dachshunds in somebody’s back yard at my end-of-West Lexington turnaround. They’re always very excited and concerned to see me, even though I’ve been coming by almost daily for a month.They remind me of our dachshund, Fritzi, who died a couple years ago and who had one of the most expressive faces I’ve ever seen.
- Downhills. The dip between St. Mildreds and Fifth Street is awful on the way up, but on the way down coming back it’s like an obstacle course–a lot of head-level tree limbs and street signs to tap. Also, I’m one of a select group of people the world over who really understand how to run downhill, so I can really cut loose (the secret is to go ahead and start falling, and trust your legs to catch up).
- Showers afterwards, which I like to start pretty hot and end icy. I feel like I’m running on auto a lot lately, so the shock of awareness that comes with the cold water is a rare and beautiful thing.
- And speaking of cold water: running in the rain. I got to do that yesterday, and it ranks high on the list of Best Things There Is. It was hard rain, too, like of significantly higher humidity than your average pond. My clothes haven’t dried yet.
Since yesterday I’ve been trying to quantify exactly what it is about running in the rain that’s so great, and I’ve yet to come up with anything concrete. It’s a certain I don’t know what.
Partly it’s that you stay cool and your mouth doesn’t dry out, and partly it’s the feeling that you’re fighting something other than gravity and yourself, and partly it’s just the sense of abandon you get from realizing that it doesn’t matter how wet you are because you’re just going to get wetter. Maybe it’s the ozone. Or maybe it’s just that you get to look at the torrents of water and the mud and the clouds, and think “what kind of maniac would be out in this weather?” and then think “oh, yeah, me.”
Things I Love AND Hate About Running
- Schrodinger Point. There’s a day, about every couple weeks or so, when I realize I’ve just jogged almost my entire route without taking a break. It’s cool because, well, it means I’m stronger and faster and in better shape than I have been in a while. It’s simultaneously totally uncool, because it means I’m going to have to run longer or faster my next time out. Thus Schrodinger Point: it exists in both states at the same time! (This isn’t technically what Schrodinger was describing, but in this case accuracy is discarded in favor of sounding cool.)
Tonight: Elvis Costello!