A runner's diary - January

It started almost before I knew I was doing it. There is no before picture, no cute photo-montage of my daily progress and running outfits. And thankfully, no record of my speed each day. Yet here I am, strapping on sneakers and ice cleats in the dead of winter. I am resolved to running every day, a mile per day, for a year.

Here are the rules. Every day I will either run one mile, or move for 10 minutes. "Moving" is further qualified as intensive enough to raise my heart rate, maybe break a sweat. I can run or jump in place, ride the stationary bike, or chase my toddler daughter, but it must be 10 unbroken minutes of activity.

The why is more complicated. I'm happy with my weight and have no intention of losing pounds. I'm not training for a marathon or endurance event. High up in the attic corners of my mind is the ghost goal of a 7-minute mile. But if that were all, I'd probably stop running for a month after I reached it. No, I'm doing this because, for me, consistency itself is the challenge. I will build a new routine into my life: get up and move. Love to move the body you're in.

This is a body that has built and held, and pushed out and nursed a child. This is a body that dances, that swims, that runs. This body once swam 8 miles across Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and 6 miles northbound in the Hudson river. This body took up Ballet at the ripe old age of 25, and was halfway decent! I love my body and what it can do, but like many of us in the year 2020, I just wasn't using it. After a day at my desk, I'd plop on the couch somehow more exhausted than in all the years of graduate school I spent walking to campus at 5 am to join the masters swim team, or the daily mile walk from my dorm to the cafeteria back in undergrad.

In truth my exercising dropped off long before COVID-19. My first post-grad job brought me to Wisconsin, to a small liberal arts campus where, in theory, I could use the pool anytime. But 20 minutes to change and shower before and after each swim added up. I hated applying make-up over goggle eyes--so gone were the midday swims--and after a full day teaching I did not want to wait around until 7 pm for open hours in the evening. Entering parenthood made trips to the pool even rarer, and limited my running to weekends when my husband could take the baby, or short runs in the evenings with the running stroller. Ultimately these are just excuses, though. My life, as I experienced it, was getting harder and more tiring, and I just didn't want to work out.

I needed a change. But for me, framing a lifestyle change as a health and fitness choice spells its doom. My health is fine. My weight is fine. I don't drink too much, and I eat chocolate on Thursdays. But I could feel myself adhering to the dining room chair pulled over to my quarantine 'office.' I could feel my joints creaking and slowness filling out the spaces between the tasks on my to-do list. Quarantine is a disembodied life, conducted remotely through machines that cause you to hunch and squint and slouch your way through the day. Relishing the sweet release of focusing your eyes on a TV 10 feet across the room, instead of a tiny screen 10 inches in front of your eyes. I didn't need to exercise to try to correct something about my body or my health. I needed to move again. I needed to be in my body again.

Running each day has brought a new energy into my life. Day after day, I throw on shoes and am running before I'm off the stoop. My route takes me along one beautiful half-mile of Lake Michigan's shore, our little red lighthouse distantly breaking the horizon. (Sorry, no daily landscape photos either). This change has instantly brought more light and air into my life as each day, despite the cold, I breath fresh air and feel it crisply against my cheeks. I see the sun.

Returning from a run, chest heaving, (because I run too fast when I don't have my watch), I feel my breaths deep within my body, moving my diaphragm. I feel blood moving in my legs. I feel instantly capable of starting a new project or jumping back into a challenge. And I have ideas again. Back to the keyboard, I have something to write. When I used to swim, I would map out whole chapters in my mind, or plan my lectures. Though I lost much of the perfect phrasing I had meticulously planned in my head before I got back to my desk, I could at least set myself in front of my computer and start writing. Swimming eliminated the distractions of internet, phones, books, and opened up head space for creativity. It's the same on these runs. Suddenly I can think again.

I think part of the joy of this new practice is that I have utterly abandoned the trappings of the runner. Half the time I wear no running watch, no cute gear. I require no water belt or electrolyte gummies, since my run is so short. I dress in the mornings in any old leggings, with a sports bra and t-shirt beneath a cozy sweater, so that I only have to switch my top layer before jaunting off for my run. No need for a specialty cold-weather, sweat-wicking, high performance outfit if I'll be back home in ten minutes anyway. Most of the time I don't even need to rinse off afterwards. And this, too, allows me to work. There is no interstitial time required to adjust back into my working day. I arrive back at my desk energized, mind clear, with something to say.

In particular I am enjoying not having a running watch. So much of the way we conceptualize exercise today is competitive, either with each other or with ourselves. We compare paces, or feel disappointment when we didn't beat yesterday's time. I think long-time runners know that their pace will fluctuate from day to day, depending maybe on the road conditions or yesterday's meal, but we are nonetheless primed to think that health and success are composed of metrics: weight, BMI, pace, bank balance. Without my watch, I am just running. All I have to do is move.

The last day in January I didn't get out on my run, though I would have enjoyed strapping on the snow cleats in the fresh dump of snow that had fallen overnight. But this wasn't a failure. I was still able to move: I ran around the house with my daughter, pretending to be firetrucks racing to a fire; we were firefighters climbing ladders and hauling hoses, and, improbably, riding bicycles. We had a blast, making delightful use of our bodies in imaginative play. For me, that is the reward. By moving each day I primed myself to jump into her world and play at her wild pace.