I Still Love Pizza
There are a couple of common themes whenever people speak or write about running. One of them is this concept of knocking down barriers. The cliche of breaking through the “wall” in a marathon to finish is just one example of the countless memes about overcoming challenges as a runner. It is maybe the reason why any runner who saw Shalane Flanagan in New York last Fall can smile when they saw her say “fuck yeah” because we know that moment, that satisfaction, that exhilaration and that joy, even if it isn’t on that scale.
About a month ago I crossed 10,000 miles since I started running in May of 2012 and while that sounds like a barrier, it wasn’t. It became more a point of reflection for me. And I have been trying to pinpoint what happened to me over those 10,000 miles. That is a much longer story, and I guess one that I have been telling on this blog for a while. But the one I thought about most recently is another one of those cliches, which is “youth is wasted on the young.” I keep reflecting back to all of the ignorance of my twenties and specifically concerning my health. I know I’m not the only one who did it. The abuse of your body when you are young is pretty prevalent. The guys and girls that I knew that were health conscious were in the minority and more often than not, their goals were driven by aesthetics, not being healthier. I think that is why it never made sense to me back then but therein in lies the barrier. In my twenties, as I ravaged my body with cigarettes, drinking, lack of sleep and bad eating habits, there was a language barrier where my brain was not listening to the whispers of my body. I didn’t listen because my body was strong enough to let me keep going despite all the cruelty I was inflicting.
I stopped smoking. I also stopped drinking to excess and discovered how to enjoy an adult beverage in moderation. My body started speaking to me when I was running, explaining that what I could do and what I couldn’t do. I started understanding that food could be fuel and could also be a source of pleasure but the quality of that food was more important than anything. I now value those nights when I fall asleep without any effort and fall into the kind of deep slumber that only someone who has run a marathon can understand. That feeling after a long race where my body is on fire but at the same time, I am exhausted so the minute I feel the cold sheets everything shuts down. In my twenties, I was a Viking. I devoured things because they were in front of me and my body was strong enough to tolerate my stupidity and indifference.
I’ll be thirty-eight this November so I maybe this would have happened anyway, but with every pound that melted away with each mile, it felt like the messages from my body were becoming more apparent. And the biggest one was the happiness I derived from being in control of my body. Not in the sense of looking a certain way but the feeling that came with being healthy. That language, those unspoken words, gave me as much mental health as it did physical health. The combination of understanding what felt right but more importantly, what felt wrong. It was easy to find my strengths, but it took some perspective to figure out my weaknesses.
It is what I try to explain to people when they ask me what triggered all these changes in the last six years. My health and my choices are never about how I look. The world tries to confuse us by convincing us that we need certain things. The concept of necessity is something that can get muddled with so many external messages. But when the mind and the body start speaking, it becomes so clear how superfluous so many things can be. I decided in 2017 to stop eating meat (full transparency I am still eating fish). It was a change that disturbed some of the people in my life. They asked me why I would make this sacrifice and what led me to this discipline. And my response is probably standard for any runner who has to explain why we do what we do. I never thought of myself as disciplined or regulated. I am not militaristic in any sense or angry about anything. The changes I made…that I continue to make, are not made out of some sense of obligation but because I wanted them. That is the premise of running that no one ever understands, that we aren’t doing it for you…we are doing for ourselves.
There is nothing more intimate than the conversation between your brain and body during a run. The cramps in my stomach when I am dehydrated. The feeling when I did drink too much the night before, and I can feel it coming through my pores. The days when I fight the cold, the heat, the rain or the wind and I think myself bend but not break. It is all the things I took for granted. That discussion about what mattered and not what other people thought. It is the elegance of the simplicity of running. My lungs, my legs, and my sneakers can help filter out all the stuff that doesn’t matter and the things that do. It’s what led to me not missing a steak that much because I get to see the sunrise over the East River in every season. A hamburger doesn’t seem like a necessity when I am crossing over bridges over that same river with sweat pouring over me. Going to bed early so I can wake up at 3:30 am to run in the rain, or the cold makes sense because they feel good…to me.
The only sad part is that the punishment I inflicted on my body before I had all of these epiphanies. I envy that small minority of wise twenty-year-olds (that seems to be growing) that value life over the expectations of others. It took me ten thousand miles to realize it.
