Throw your head back

Last night's run was one of those throw your head back and revel experiences. I can't explain why. No one thing was special about the run. I took my usual path from the office, ran at a hearty but ordinary pace, in the typical late summer evening breeze, darting along with the same swamp bunny audience. Heck, I didn't even have the happy swish-swish of a running skirt or my favorite sunshine-yellow top. Just ordinary running shorts. But perhaps it was the so very ordinary that made the run so very remarkable. No new scenery to distract me. Too dusky to take note of litter in the bayou. No hitches in the knee. And the skateboarding twerps must have all gone back to school.

For that time, my world was reduced to just the crunch-crunch of my feet on the grass, bayou scrubbrush tinged violet-gray by the dimming light, and a mauve sunset deepening into a dark, glittering skyline. And all was right within it.

That something so biomechanically routine, so-old-as-time, so inherent, so easy as softly kicking back one foot after another, padding lightly down, and doing it all again, over and over, can buoy the spirits always momentarily amazes me. And then that momentary amazement gives way, at the peak of that ebullience, when I feel like a kid again, darting across a field with abandon, arms flapping, stride fluid and strong and unhindered, to a little bit of melancholy, that we adults mostly let the rapture of childhood running slip away. When did running become a chore? And more importantly, why?

Why I run: River Oaks menagerie, Tiny Boxwood's, sprinkles

This weekends' runs were not great.

Not wanting to re-anger the knee, I opted for slow, hour-long runs through the Ho Chi Minh trails. There was no thrill of bounding up and down the pitches in the trail. No sense of accomplishment at having put in several hours of running before the first cup of coffee. No meaningful distance. No adrenaline after-glow.


Sometimes runs like these are the best reminder of why I run. Nothing so focuses the mind as having to make it, one of my profs would bellow at hesitating students (with t-rex arms gesticulating madly; if you weren't the object of torture that day, it was comical. Almost.). Crisp weather, a fresh route, or a new running skirt make for an effervescent start to almost any run (the finish? that's inversely proportional to the heat index). But it's in starting the tired, cautiously paced, uninspired run that I remember best why I run.

When I'm willing myself to get out the door, these are my tonic:

1. Coltrane on the ipod at the peak of the run

2. Padding through the roots on Ho Chi Minh

3. A little cloudburst of sprinkles during a sultry lunch run

4. Cutting through the front yard in FiveFingers

5. The last 30 seconds of Under Pressure

6. Running the bridges over 59 in Montrose during morning rush hour

7. Chuckling at Assito the burrow and his llama amigo on the tony R.O. side of the Bayou

8. Sunlight, dappled and dancing among the skinny pine trees (one of the few joys of the dreadful Memorial loop)

9. Sunlight, searing my bare shoulders after escaping the office AC

10. Sunlight, finally! After starting a run in the dark

11. Sunlight beaming through the windows of Tiny Boxwood's (bonus: motivation to tack on a little extra distance so I can enjoy their fresh bread and goat cheese; double bonus: a little extra extra effort and I can partake of the sangria)

12. That surprise moment of contentedness, when consumed in thought, you hit the perfect groove, and suddenly realize your limbs and lungs are in synchronicity, propelling you seemingly involuntarily

13. Remembering what it was to run the first mile, then the first three, then six....nine....twelve.....twenty.....thirty-one.

Marathon: the quintessential running experience?

It's that time of year again--the annual crisis of my running conscience. Registration for the 2010 Houston Marathon came and went in about 48 hours. And while the bike cops at Memorial Park ticket the illegally parked Houston-Fitters, and the blackberry buzzes with fundraising solicitations from registered friends, the nagging thoughts resurface: can I really call myself a runner if I don't run marathons?

It's not about the distance. I've completed longer - 50K's (slowly). It's more about the experience. The thousands of other runners. The loads of spectators. The bands playing in Memorial Park. The not having to give a primer on the metric system. The having that easily communicable, universally-understood, 3 digit classifier of athleticism -- the marathon finish time.

It's also about the walking. Trail race terrain can be technical, and the race distance is usually sufficient to justify some walking. At least in my experience, walking inevitably happens before mile 26. On the other hand, a flat, fast marathon like Houston is run -- without walking - by elite runners and weekend warriors alike every year.

So, cue the nagging. From the little voice that says "but there was walking involved" whenever someone commends running longer than 26.2...and says "but this would be a lackluster marathon finish time" (the 5 extra miles, soul-sucking sand, and curse-inducing roots notwithstanding).

And there's the rub. I detest running on concrete (almost as much as I detest loops) about as much as I revere the tranquility of single track in the woods. The thought of paying good money to pound away on pavement, on city roads I can run anytime, with a few thousand too many other runners, is enough to make my quads cramp.....but am I missing out on the quintessential runner's experience....is the marathon (or half) the universal language--or the secret club code--of "true runners"?