Running Naked
Friday, January 04, 2008
Reasons abound as to why I love going home to the UP. Family? Bimbo's pizza? Beautiful, familiar sights that bring back so many great growing-up memories? Check, check, and check.
But there's one other, too -- I know all of the roads leading from our little parcel on Bass Lake Road and exactly how far I have to travel on each to put the desired number of miles on my little brown Asics. As such, I leave the Garmin behind. No waiting to start my run until it (slowly) locates its satellites. No staring at my wrist more than the scenery around me. No obsessively checking my pace and trying to match my footfall to make the lower left corner of the screen read exactly 9:30, or god-willing, 8:45. No holding my left wrist in front of my face, willing the mileage readout to hit the predetermined half-way point before turning around.
Instead, headed out the door I call to my family, sitting around the kitchen table (as this is 1. where my family chooses to gather, and 2. symbolic of our collective love of and devotion to food), one of the following: "I'm going to run to the greenhouse and back" (3 miles), "I'm going to run Belagomba" (4 or 5 miles, depending on when I choose to turn around), or "I'm going to run the lake" (either 5 or 8 miles, depending). They nod. They know these miles too, as intimately as I do.
The day after Christmas, I announce that a Belagomba run is in order. "Use the treadmill. It's cold out," my mom tells me. This, I know, is an option. The treadmill is a top-notch one. I've used it for everything from interval training for track when I was home on break from college to Ironman training just last year. And I can see that even though a morning sun is out, it's brisk. Flakes hang in the air in our backyard and snow kicked up from the ski hill floats like a fine mist above it in the distance.
"It's fine," I tell her. "I don't mind." I don't take time to explain that I live for winter running. The way my hands warm inside mittens. The way my feet have to try harder to find the pavement. The way the air burns with each breath. I love that I'm out there in the elements, and once I'm bundled up, it doesn't seem quite so cold at all. I love that I can run and run and run and not overheat. I love the muted crunch of snow underfoot. I love that I rarely see anyone else out there with me, unlike in the summer months when roads and bike paths are teeming with joggers.
I accidentally wake Chief of Stuff when I run back upstairs to dig out my hat and mittens. He asks what I'm doing, and then if I want company. I tell him no, to go back to bed. And I mean it. I'm looking forward to the next hour alone -- no offense meant to anyone.
I'm in a contemplative mood and without my Garmin to tell me how fast to go or precisely how far, I just run. For the first time on a run, I put on George Winston's December and let myself get lost in the piano's haunting notes.
It goes this way for the next mile and a half. I decide then that I need words. Kanye West's Through the Wire to be exact -- it has a beat to it, but not too fast, and is inspirational to boot. And then. My trusty pink Ipod, as it's been prone to do lately, simply stops.
I try to call up Kanye once again, and it looks promising. A few more words, and then, once again, nothing. I punch at the little white dial hoping, and then praying, that it will somehow come back on. Despite the low battery sign I get each time. Despite the fact that eventually, even that fails to show up. And then I decide that this is pointless and silly. Praying for one's Ipod to work? Really? As if God has nothing at all better to do than worry about my perfect run being ruined by this little imperfection.
So I start running again, headphones in my ears in case the music somehow comes back on. And, as I'm prone to do, I argue. With myself. I whine to me that this is a big deal. It's my first run in a while, the first outside run in even longer. (I gave myself the freedom to focus on writing this past month, on trying to finish my book, instead of making running a priority. It's mostly worked.) I had pictured this run since arriving in the UP, and a major part of it was the songs I wanted to listen to -- I had a full list of them! So I convince myself to stop, and poke at the Ipod a little more. Still nothing. Two-and-a-half miles to go, with no music. I get mad, and then I start getting cold, and so I decide to just start running.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was running naked. No Garmin. No music. Not even a Vizsla or two by my side. Just me. My breathing. My footsteps.
This is the part where I'm supposed to say how liberating it felt. How freeing. And, in part, it did. I thought about my form. I felt my muscles more acutely than I normally would. And at the end of five miles, the post-run hangover that I often get, when Garmin tells me that my average pace is higher than I had hoped, was pleasantly absent.
It was somewhat liberating. It felt good...at times. But more importantly, it was a good experience to have. Reminding me why I was out there. Forcing me to me enjoy the dips and turns in those roads I know so well. Helping me to actually feel my body instead of just willing it to move.
And so, for a while, I've decided that I'm going to keep the Garmin at home. To remain free, for a while, of the need to compete against myself -- against what I could do this past summer, or even last winter, at this time. Because I'm no longer that person. The one who could knock off 8:30 minute-miles for a 5k, bike 30 miles, and then do a quick 5k again. The one who ran mile repeats all last winter. The one who ran a 56-minute 10k the day after the Dairyland Dare and at the end of an oly tri. The one who ran a marathon after a nearly 10 hours of swimming and biking this past September. I will be again. Closer to spring. But I'm not now. And for now, that needs to be okay.
But the Ipod? That's still coming with me. No need to go totally naked.
Posted by Erin 9:04 AM
I'm not a fan of running without my music. I can go without my Garmin, but unless I'm running through some beautiful, magical heaven, I don't care to hear nature or cars or my footsteps while I run.
And I would KILL to be that person you were just describing.
I always run "naked" so I was looking forward to you being a convert, but you pretty much shot that hope down. ;)
How's your novel coming? Juicy details at the next JLT?