songs of experience

I have spent the last few days rummaging around in my past. I thought I would feel free and motivated and raring to go once Lizzie was in school full time, but I find myself wandering around the house, my empty nest, waiting for my life to re-start. Maybe, as my friend said, I am paralyzed with freedom. Or maybe it’s just plain grief. I hear phantom chirping from my flown little bird, “Mommy! Can we make some magenta play-dough?” but when I go to the kitchen, no one’s there. When I stretch out on the floor, no one jumps on me or squeeeeeeeeeeezes my neck with 5 year-old love. I want to call, “Lizzie, look!” when a yellow butterfly lands on the begonia by the window. But I don’t. My words stay in my head … or in my throat, with that damn lump.

It did make feel a little better when, in my rummaging, I unearthed something I wrote 10 years ago … during another life-changing time … because, hard as it is, this too shall pass. I think a good, long run would help right about now.

-from Bob Dylan’s Brownsville Girl

Running and Me; A Love Story (written for a talk I was giving at a clinic for The Charlotte Observer marathon/10k, published on-line by DoitSports, circa 1997)

I’m sitting here is the parking lot of the YMCA in Chapel Hill with my 8 month-old daughter, Rosemary, sleeping beside me. I just dropped off Sarah Jane (who’s now 4 and 1/2) at her Montessori school and have these few, sacred minutes alone to think, and write, about what I’d like to say to a room full of runners. I’m sure I will look out and see some familiar faces - since I did go to East Mecklenburg high school in Charlotte - but many of you are strangers. Well, not really strangers, because we all have one very important thing in common: our love of running.

It’s almost like running is this great friend we both share. If a = b and b = c then a = c (!?) or something like that. Anyway, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about … running as a friend, a companion, a lover even … in other words, the relationship of running. “WHAT!?” many of you will be saying, “I thought I was going to learn how to improve my 10k time.” Go read Runner’s World for that. You see, I don’t view running as what I DO or who I AM, but as this thing, this force, that changes me over time. I am in a relationship with running that has lasted almost 20 years. What’s the 25th wedding anniversary? The silver? Well, running and I are approaching our silver wedding anniversary - pretty amazing when you consider today’s divorce rate!

Rosemary’s still snoozing so I’ll move on to page two. I am writing, by the way, on the back of an article I passed out to my cross-country teams at UNC - it’s about “improving one’s oxygen debt tolerance” which I can talk about when we get to the technical portion of today’s program (heh heh, didn’t that sound like official clinic-ese?). So, I have all these chores I need to do today: buy a headlight, get the oil changed, fix lunch for Sarah Jane’s play group, go to track practice, find something for dinner, make a Dr.’s appointment for Rosemary, etc…. but notice I don’t include “run” on the list. It’s not something I have “to do” any more than, say, “love my daughters” or “breathe” would be on my “to do” list. It just IS.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning of this relationship. I first met running, My Mr. Right, back in about 8th grade. I tried out for the junior high track team but they had no event for girls longer than the 200m, so I was a 3rd string sprinter. I guess you could say after that running and I dated around for a few years. It wasn’t until 11th grade - when I came to Charlotte and had the great Larry McAfee as my coach (whom I now affectionately refer to as “God”) that running and I got serious. We decided to go steady my senior year … and by steady I don’t mean I won a state championship or earned a scholarship to Carolina (which I did do), but that I was steady, or steadfast, in my commitment to run every day and to see how far my talent would carry me. As with any relationship, the decision to be faithful precedes the results of fidelity. I made the decision in high school that running was mine and I was running - for better or worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health.

There was and always has been far more better than worse but, I have to admit, there were some rocky times in my relationship with running. For instance, in college when I had my first injury (a stress-fractured third metatarsul, not much now that I look back on it - a mere 4-5 weeks out of commission). When it hit me I was furious with running for betraying me this way! I remember throwing my running log across the room and ripping out 6 weeks of pages because my life was RUINED, or so I thought. And there was the time after college when I couldn’t find any motivation to continue racing yet I couldn’t quit altogether so I blamed running for keeping me from “seeing other people” so to speak. We actually broke up for a few months. Love songs and hurt songs that came on the radio applied to me and my running, not to any guy in my life.

In these instances of rage and alienation from running I have never felt more lost. Homeless, even. The great North Carolina writer, Thomas Wolfe (author of Look Homeward, Angel) wrote of not being able to go home again after coming of age and that his home became his red, leather-bound journals. Well, for me, home is my running. Without it I am one lonely lady. My favorite place on earth is the final turn at the end of UNC’s track, by the steeple pit. That’s where we all stretch and talk and share our lives before working out. Sometimes when the weather’s warm I fill up the pit for my daughter to swim in. I love the smell of the slightly melting mondo surface when the temperature gets really hot … and after cool downs, I love the pink and orange and raspberry sunsets over the back of the track. Ahhhh, now I’m getting sentimental and sleeping Rosemary is no longer sleeping. I’d better go. I’ll leave you with one of my 4 year-old’s knock-knock jokes:

“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Otts.”
“Otts who?”
“Bless you!”

Bless you all, joan