Twenty-Year Run

January 23, 2020

Twenty-Year Run

As a child looking occasionally to adulthood, I never considered running.

Running was something we did as kids, just being kids, running and biking and roller skating around our neighborhoods. It didn't need thinking about.

2019

Then the teen years arrived, when my mom jumped both feet into running as therapy, inviting me along to the high school track to soak in the southern California foothill sunrises. She ran in circles; I sat, a front-row audience to the runner and the riser. I loved the warm and cool currents breezing over the bleachers and over my arms, inhaled the rising sage orange air, took the stillness into my bones.

I watched her; I went out for cross country - for a day. I married a runner. I watched him, too.

I ran a few times, here and there, through my twenties. After a baby, when there were speckled woods to run through, in fits of "I shoulds."

In August of 2000, our family of six went over the pond to Kosovo, at that time part of Serbia. North of Macedonia and the Other Macedonia, east of Albania and Montenegro, west of Hungary. The streets had been shelled; mud was where we walked. And ran.

Our teammate, Brenda, a basketball player by experience, wanted to run to stay in shape after the winter season. I said, "hmmm...I can try!" Twenty years later, I haven't had a significant time away from it. Thank you, Brenda!

Brenda. And the Brinkmenandwomen.

one of the Minnesota Amys

I have run in cities, woods, parks, villages, between apple orchards and cornfields in Minnesota. Mountains, beaches, river paths, islands. Detroit, the Croatian coast & Montenegro & Greece, Seattle, Chicago, a northern China plain & middle China misty town, Orlando, Germany's Black Forest, Palm Desert, Honolulu, New York City, Scotland, Hong Kong & Hilton Head, Indiana roads and trails, Skopje & Prishtina. All the states in the western quarter of the USA. Not with runner-husband - he was too fast for me, but with Amy & Amy, with Karen, with my second-gift husband. With a lifeline group of marathoners in France. In tears, in joy, in everydayness, in grief, in gratefulness.

My heart and head are fuller than they would have been, because of the people and places running has brought me. Full of memories, full with conversation, scents & sights, ideas, mud snow heat rain beautiful sun.

I know I can run 15 miles. I know that gummies and laughter are important to have in those 15 miles.

Last fall, I went to see a doctor in Idaho. I was looking just for a check up, a baseline for down the road. I wanted an osteopath, a woman, one with multi-cultural experience - and I found one. "Why are you here? You are very healthy!" Explanation.
And what I really wanted was to work with her to figure out how I can keep running for the next 20 years, if it's possible.

"Maybe you need to stop running - or do other things, like yoga, hiking...."

the one and only Hoosier Karen

Hmmm. Not what I was looking for. Perhaps that will be where I go, eventually - and perhaps not.

I was looking for a professional who would listen, who would respond to my language and desires, who would bring me things I hadn't come across on my own.

One more reason to continue working on my own listening and responsiveness. One more reason to do my own research and strengthen connections with a community.