But even more, as so much of life halted, running created the sensation of movement. It made sense - running could be done from nearly anywhere, it offered an excuse to go outside and didn’t require the participation of other people.
I trained during the pandemic, when running gained newfound popularity. With my 50th birthday approaching, my son and I signed up for the BAA Boston Half Marathon. Even if I didn’t know the people I was running with, I was part of this fleet of thousands, with a shared focus and goal. On a sweltering July night, we began outside Gillette Stadium and ran through the Foxboro streets, as neighbors came outside to cheer, as a little boy handed out water, and a woman offered to cool runners with a garden hose. Instead of some nebulous idea that time put in will eventually yield results, progress is measurable: a hill that no longer feels as daunting, a mile completed in less time, with less pain, than the week before.Įven though I primarily ran alone, I came to appreciate another of the pleasures of running when I, along with my husband and son, signed up for the Harvard Pilgrim Finish at the Fifty 10K. While other sports require a certain level of skill, the benefits of running come early.
It took years of quitting, then starting again, but eventually, I was running regularly, two miles, then three, then four.
"The morning of the run, I wrote on my hand, 'The mile you’re on,'" writes Tova Mirvis. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a runner. It reminded me of something a writing teacher once told me: If you’re a writer, then you write. I didn’t have to be fast or particularly coordinated. But the first time I jogged/walked around Crystal Lake in Newton, I realized that there was no special skill to learn. The hardest part was traversing my certainty that I could never be a runner.
But as I drove the kids to school, as I made little discernible progress on my book, I watched the runners along Commonwealth Avenue and felt a stirring. From years of never working out, I felt slow, plodding, weighted down with kids and a novel I was endlessly working on. Growing up, my family’s primary sport was reading. With two young kids in a stroller, I could no more imagine running 26.2 miles than I could envision flying. The first time I watched the Boston Marathon, the runners passing by my spot at the foot of Heartbreak Hill seemed superhuman, engaged in an otherworldly feat. Marathon runners race through the “scream tunnel” at Wellesley College in 2019.
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