Pursuing Personal Queer Excellence! Thrill of Victory? Agony of Defeat?
How My Excellent Queer Running Life Shocked Me Into Joy
Even though the idea of me as an athlete felt queerly impossible
Running shirtless in a light rain! In the cold! Ten miles behind me, eight to go. Feet so light they barely touch the ground! I sip in crystal air through my nose. I exhale energizing little puffs out my mouth, knowing for sure that I was born to run and that I could run forever for the pure joy of it!
That memory — of training for a marathon in my late 40s — is a happy place, a joyful moment etched deep into my psyche. I go there sometimes when I feel sadness or despair, just like I time-travel back to a green-mossed, icy mountain pool that delighted my baby goat and me when I was 12.
But 12-year-old me could NEVER have imagined 48-year-old me as an athlete.
Forty-year-old me could never have imagined 48-year-old me as a runner!
Flashing back to 12, I remember running on a school soccer field, a little surprised I was DOING THIS — that I wasn’t half bad. I knew I wasn’t an athlete, every kid in junior high knew. I was clumsy Jamie who prefered to play with girls.
