why I run

I've been running a fair amount.  I did a 15k a month after the marathon and, just over a month later, I'm about to do a half-marathon.  I'm taking a Tuesday night running class and sometimes I run with a friend or a group from work and try to get in a long run every weekend, and if that doesn't add up to enough I do another run or two on the treadmill during the week.

People ask me all the time why I do it.  Not how I do it, because I'm not good at it.  I'm not the tiniest bit fast or any sort of strong, and my endurance, which is my least-weak area, is not really very good.  I'm just a regular person, a regular slow and weak person, who runs somewhat a lot.  (In fact, as runners go, I don't run very much at all.)  Non-runners ask me why I do it because they think I must be crazy to willingly subject myself to cold weather and muscle pain and the general feeling of impending death.  Even worse, sometimes runners ask me why I do it because can't understand how I could possibly enjoy it given how much I suck.

But I do enjoy it.  I enjoy exercise, I enjoy the outdoors, I enjoy numbers (there are a lot of numbers in running).  I enjoy pushing myself.  I enjoy the feeling of calm after a tough workout. 

I enjoy it *more* because I suck.  I'm good at the same number of things as everybody else, but the things I'm good at are the things that get quantified a lot.  I was good at school.  I was good at tests.  I was good at my job before I switched careers, and I'm good at my job now.  I'm good at being responsible and organized and taking initiative and following through.  Being good at these things has made my life easier and probably better, but there's not much satisfaction in being naturally good at things.

Historically, the things I suck at have been things I could avoid, or things I could decide were unimportant.  I can't sing or draw or cook, so I don't. I spend orders of magnitude less time than most women in New York (or everywhere?) fussing over my appearance because I can't quite wrap my mind around the concept of trying to be beautiful.  I was never a social butterfly, and I never tried to be.  I've never been much of one for chasing boys - they chase me, or they don't - or pursuing friendships or pushing for, really, anything.  I've actually had to be reminded that if you don't apply for jobs, you are not going to be offered any.  Generally if something doesn't come naturally to me, I just don't do it, and I'm lucky enough that I've been able to get by.

Or unlucky enough.  Because I've generally been good at things in a number and combination sufficient to my survival, I haven't been forced to leave my comfort zone.  I've worked hard, but only in ways I'm comfortable with.  I've been the person it's easy for me to be, but not always the person I want to be and, maybe, could be.

Running is not easy for me.  Being bad at things is not easy for me.  I finished in the 11th percentile of marathon runners in the 2011 ING New York City Marathon, and I'm pretty sure - aside from, possibly, other races - I've never worked that hard to be in the 11th percentile of anything before.  But I'm proud of myself for sticking to it, for going out there a few times a week and fighting - as best I can on that day - to suck a little bit less.  Running is teaching me to struggle, to fail a lot of the time and keep on trying, to work hard for no immediate reward, to do something that may never matter to anyone but myself.  It's practice, for growing into my own imperfect self.

2011 and 2012

I didn't really make New Year's resolutions - or, as it seems to be fashionable to call them just now - annual goals for 2011.  I felt like 2010 had been a very full and challenging year, in particular with finally making a much-anticipated career change, and that I deserved a break.  In 2011, I wanted to just be.

So I was.  And, actually, the year was far from empty.  Here are some highlights:

• Work.  I got settled into my (not-so-) new (anymore) job.  This is the first time I've had a job that didn't have a pre-ordained expiration date, and the first time I've worked outside of academia, so it's been a big adjustment.
• Running.  I did a fair amount of it, including a half-marathon PR in Brooklyn in May and finishing the 2011 ING New York City marathon.  I'm still very slow and very weak, but I'm hella stubborn.  
• Travel.  I went to Costa Rica and took a cycling trip in Ireland.  I also visited family in San Diego and went to a wedding in Nebraska. 
• Social life.  I was a bit worried, at the end of 2010, that with the career change I'd drift apart from old friends and not make new ones.  And, yes, I did drift apart from some friends, but other friendships remained intact or even strengthened, and I've met some great new people. 

It's certainly not the massive list of accomplishments that some people post, but I don't think it's half bad.  This year I have some goals in these areas, as well as some new goals:

• Work.  The goal here is, really, to figure out what my goals are.
• Running.  I don't plan on running another marathon this year; it's such a massive investment of time and energy that I can't see doing it without severely compromising other objectives, which means not doing it all that often.  But I do plan on running several half-marathons, and I'd like to work on whittling down my time.  Not to be really fast - I doubt that's possible for me - but just to be, well, less slow.  If I were just 10-20% faster, I'd be able to run with (some of) my friends without holding them back, and go on group runs without worrying about keeping up, and my long runs would take less time, and I wouldn't be slower than practically every other person who runs in Central Park.  So I've been doing tempo runs and hills and giving (almost) every workout a purpose.  I've also signed up for weekly running classes specifically designed to target speed.  I realize I'll never be a speed demon (in fact, so far all the extra work seems to be making me slower and weaker), but I think it's worth investing some energy trying to improve myself in this department.
• Travel.  I haven't fully hammered this out yet.  I may go to Turkey in the spring.  I may visit friends in other cities.  I may visit friends in other cities to run half marathons with them. 
• Social life.  This year I want to focus on strengthening my connections.  When friends are just people you talk to once in a while, it's easy to drift apart.  When they're people you do things with, you have a more vibrant bond.  I have lots of friends in other cities - including some very cool cities, and I'd like to visit some of them.  I also plan to do more running with friends and in groups, which is part of why I'd like to be less slow.  And I'll look for other opportunities to build relationships based on something other than a shared affinity for wine / gossip / cupcakes.
• Cultural engagement.  There's only so much time in the week, and - especially in the last six months, as running and social engagements took up more of my time - I've had to drop some things.  I've been doing a lot of theater-going, which is good.  I'd like to resume attendance at the semi-serious book club of which I'm a delinquent member, which means acquiring and reading the books in a timely manner.  I'd like to go to the ballet several times and the opera occasionally.  I'd like to be less lazy in the things I read and watch at home, too - it's easy for me to come home and queue up the next episode of DS9 or scroll through the new posts in my Google Reader, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I want to make more time to engage with longer things - serious movies and books that aren't mindless-metro-chick-lit downloaded for a dollar.  In the last couple weeks I read Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs, which I thought was only okay (it was hard to get a bead on the main character, and it didn't really come together in the end), but it was nice to have something to sink my teeth into.  This afternoon I'm watching Waitress, which is not as fluffy as I thought it would be; in fact it's a little bit scary and depressing, but that's probably the point
• Writing.  This is the final and most frightening goal.  I have a lot of resistance to writing properly.  It's easy to hammer out a blog post every so often - at times I've written them every day (not here, obviously).  It's harder to write - and revise! - something of substance.  But I want to do it, or more accurately I want to stick with it.  Especially with the emergence of Kindle self-publishing, it's easy for this sort of project to have an actual end goal.  There's some good stuff out there, and some real dreck, and there's no reason my writing shouldn't join all the other writing out in the world.