Running

Running

I used to run to hurt myself. I never would have openly admitted it even to myself at the time but between the ages of around 18 to 20 years old I ran to feel large amounts of physical pain which I thought I deserved. Running was about feeling razorblades shred against my lungs as I grasped for oxygen and the hot strain of my muscles as they pulled themselves apart like twizzlers in the hands of a child. My earbuds would blast midwest emo and folk punk so loud that post runs my ears would ring. One of my favorite songs to run to at the time "No Children” by The Mountain Goats opens with the line “I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us.”

After these runs I was left delirious, spent, and relieved. The exertion offered brief respite from the hatred I felt after getting too drunk at some college party and acting a fool, or the sickening feeling I was far too dumb to be studying physics and was soon to be flunked out, or the pain of some fight over the phone with my contentious long distance girlfriend who was quick to remind me of every one of my long list of shortcomings. These fights always ended up with me apologizing profusely and then going for a run. Of course if I didn’t have an immediate psychic pain there was always the everlooming pain of my parents' messy divorce which had resulted in my dad saying he was going to the mechanic before leaving the house without saying goodbye on the morning after my high school graduation.  

In my head my psychic pain and the pain I put myself through were unrelated. In my head I ran hard because I played competitive ultimate frisbee for the University of Wisconsin Madison Hodags (named after the mythical beast of Rhinelander Wisconsin) and I took that incredibly seriously. As insane as it sounds I in large part applied and went to the University of Wisconsin Madison because I wanted to play for their frisbee team. In high school I watched the most ridiculous early 2000s homemade documentary from the hodags called “The Blueprint” religiously. These college guys filmed themselves sprinting up hills in the rain and dangerously slamming into other teams with macho man gusto. The way they talked about wanting to do anything to win and pushing themselves was the gospel to me. I wanted to play for the semi-pro ultimate frisbee league so bad I would do anything to get better.

To make the team the tryout takes over a month starting with over 100 players and selecting seven or so new guys. Making it as a freshman like I did was a big personal accomplishment. The Hodags asked that committed players put in 3 multiple hour practices a week and then on top of that 3 conditioning workouts of lifts or stairs or sprints etc. My runs were in my mind the extra key to breaking into the next level of my game. Looking back on it I was far from the only one on the team of twenty five or so guys whose intensity about ultimate frisbee was covering some unresolved personal issues. The team drank heavily and consumed large amounts of weed and at any given moment there was always chatter about someone not doing too hot mentally although that was never confronted openly in the group. My junior year, one teammate and close friend simply stopped showing up and we were informed that he flunked out of college and had been failing for a long time without telling anyone. We just stopped seeing him. 

On the field we could leave it all that behind. We ran till puking, we pushed and yelled at each other, we dived at that frisbee with zero regard for personal safety or anyone else's safety for that matter. I took a special pride in my willingness to throw my body around like that. I even got included in the Ultimate Frisbee Association's 2020 men’s college highlight video for a diving block that I immediately followed by me screaming and taunting the camera.

  Injuries were common and always regarded with a certain taboo. ACL tears happen all the time in ultimate and we had more than our fair share of concussions. On the team there was a protocol for being injured. You got hurt, you were out, it sucked, everyone talked about it in hushed and worried voices wondering what it would mean for the strength of the team, you did your physical therapy or expensive surgery, came to watch practice from the sideline and eventually returned some weeks or months later as if nothing had happened. 

That is not what happened when I got injured. During my Junior year I began to get a nagging pain in my left inner thigh and a feeling that my left leg wouldn’t give any power when I asked it too. It got worse and worse despite my hours of panicked googling. When at a spring practice I was beat badly to the corner of the endzone while my leg helplessly tried to give me power it no longer had. I walked off the field, took my cleats off and didn’t play competitive Ultimate again. I didn’t show up to practice, I didn’t do the physical therapy like I was supposed to, I was simply done. Anytime I tried to go back I would immediately jump to trying to run as hard as possible like the good old days and my leg would ache till it hurt to walk for days. I didn’t want any reminder of my perceived failure so I didn’t go to practice. The way the team culture was, no one really checked in on me. My brief athletic career in the world of ultimate frisbee was over. 

So at 20 years old I had to give up on my identity, my friends, and my first all consuming life goal. On top of that, my body would no longer let me run till I felt as though I was holding onto reality like a parkinson's patient using chopsticks, a feeling I so desperately craved during this time of distress. It was during that time that I really started to pursue art. With all my extra time I began to form a new identity around drawing and painting. I started to see life as full of possibility now that I had my schedule to myself. Still it sucked I couldn’t run. 

A week and a half ago I ran a marathon on my 25th birthday. I had trained for it for 18 weeks. Cautiously in May I had begun to follow the calendar of a beginner centric marathon plan that I followed diligently until August 21st when I left my apartment with my phone, a liter of Gatorade, two squished corner store cinnamon buns, and a Little Debbies birthday cake square all neatly tucked into a beat up purple fanny pack. I finished 26.2 miles in 3 hours and 58 minutes.

I have grown a lot since my days where I would run to hurt myself. I now know that self destruction only feels good for a moment and the last thing you need when life is kicking your ass is for you to lend it a helping hand. When training for a marathon you simply have to run too much to really let yourself have it all the time. Most of your training must be done for hours at a leisurely jaunt like pace. It is more of a long hike than anything. During my many runs I listened to podcasts or slow weepy music and even nothing at all. I used my running time to think and meditate, to write, to process, but not to harm. I turned off mile updates so I couldn’t see the pace I ran at, I took a nearly week long break when I developed a mysterious toe pain. 20 year old me was probably more than in shape enough to run a marathon but nowhere near mature or healthy enough to train for one. I could never imagine giving myself the grace to take a break back then. I couldn’t imagine running something slow and enjoying a calm, easy kind of exhaustion. That was something I didn’t deserve. More than the distance I ran during the marathon day, I am proud of spending three months training. I am proud I no longer run to hurt myself. 

My dad was always training for a marathon. He ran one successfully, or maybe two I am not exactly sure, but I remember he was always training for one. I once in middle school said I wanted to run with him and despite me never running more than a mile he didn’t change his plan at all and we ran 7 miles together. He told me then that running was like hitting your head against the wall. It feels great when you stop. He got injured often. He would rub his knees anxiously at the dinner table or inform us his hopes for this year's marathon were over on account of his nagging achilles (a problem he solved one day when he discovered stretching before runs). He spent many hours of the weekend on long runs and fit weekday runs in despite his hour commute to work. He was also the father of four. Often while training I thought about him and what running may have meant to him. It was likely an escape, a moment of peace. Judging that he saw running as adjacent to banging your head into the wall there was probably some level of hurting oneself. In training to run my own marathon I learned that no father in general should really have time to run one in the first place, but I didn’t really get any closer to understanding him. He often said that running gave him time to think. He is a mathematician and I don’t doubt that he spent a large amount of his running time thinking about math like I think about writing and painting, but what about everything else? All those hours out there and certainly we were on his mind for some of it.  

Of course I could ask him. He is very much alive, we just simply don’t really talk that much anymore. I told him to stop contacting me entirely sometime in spring, but we’ve emailed once or twice since then. On August 22nd, one day after my birthday, he sent me an email titled 25 years in which he said the song “What’s Up?” by the 4 Non Blondes reminded him of me and since the opening line is “25 years” I should give it a listen but not “read too much into it”. 

“25 years and my life is still running up that hill looking for a destination,” is the full opening line. I certainly am still running up that hill, but at 25 years I’ve learned it doesn’t need to hurt so much. 

Me and my Birthday Cake