I’m going to get more serious about running.

Am I a runner now? No. Have I ever been a distance runner? No. In elementary school, I was the fastest girl in my class but the competition was not stiff. I ran track in 7th, 8th and 9th grades but I was only out there because everyone else was doing it and because the girls’ team often came into contact with the boys’ team while practicing and at meets. For meets I ran shorter distances. Not the all-out sprints (I was no longer the fastest girl in the class) but the 200 or 400 meter. Stuff like that. I’m not sure I ever placed in a race.

I’ve done some jogging off and on through the years. It never takes. I haven’t been blessed with a particularly lean  body or natural stamina. I’m prone to headaches and cramping and shin splints. My knees crack. I’m now about 15 pounds away from what I consider a healthy weight for me. I have terrible breathing and get red in the face when I run.

But I’m going to get more serious about running.

I’m not sure why but it started over the summer. I started jogging, just a little, with the dog. She’s worse than I am, although she’s the picture of health and in the prime of her dog life. Her reasons for sucking are because she wants to stop and smell everything and she really sees no point in running at all if she’s not running away from another dog in play or running after something to hunt. Luckily for her, I am such a weak runner that I can’t run without stopping to walk. I have to alternate jogging and walking in intervals. At first these intervals were two minutes. After a walking warm-up, I’d do two minutes “on” (meaning running) and two minutes off (meaning walking). I did this for 30 to 40 minutes.

Then I started lengthening my time running. The first time I ran for four minutes without stopping I didn’t feel so great afterward. But I kept at it, little by little. Then one night, after it was already dark, I went running and I ran longer than ever before. Something like six minutes without stopping for one interval and then several intervals after that of 3 or 4 minutes at a time. I’m sure this sounds pathetic to an experienced runner but for me it was a revelation. Six minutes. That’s something to build on. And the feeling was like nothing else  – energy and strength welling up from somewhere deep inside, making it possible to keep going on.

Just as sometimes I know when I’m absolutely done with something and it’s time to break ties, I know when I want to do something. And I want to run. I want to be a completely below-average runner. I don’t necessarly need to enjoy it. I want to do it without thinking and have it be that thing I do, that place I go to, where I don’t have to be good. I just have to do it. I’m sure I look , to passersby, like I’m going to die. I’m sure I have terrible form and look hefty in my exercise clothing. And that’s liberating.

Over vacation last week I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a memoir by the novelist Haruki Murakami and it was as if everything that was already swirling around in my mind had settled down onto the page. I often wonder how I have so much in common, at least in thought process, with a 60-year-old Japanese man. It’s like something right out of his books – a Japanese man and an American woman share thought patterns or brain waves or something and they’ve never even met. I never fail to find his writing incredibly comforting and insightful, even if I sometimes find myself grappling just to understand all the action in some of his novels.

As I get into my late 30s, I find it very comforting to get my heart rate up high enough so that I can feel my heart working hard in my chest. Part of this is because I have a very low resting heart beat. It often feels like there’s nothing happening at all in there so it feels especially great to rev up. I like to break a sweat. It’s like, “Oh, I’m still alive!” It feels good and necessary instead of bothersome, which is how exercise sometimes felt when I was younger.

But exercise when I was younger was built around other desires, mainly the desire to be more attractive. Now I find myself wanting to get in touch with something, make contact, before it’s too late. When I’m running, I’m running towards something. Maybe some part of myself I haven’t reached yet. I want to catch it by the hand.

I’m going to get more serious about running. Tomorrow morning I’ll be out there before work, running with the dog. She won’t like it. I might not either. But then at the end we’ll both be smiling.

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