Half man, half marathon

It all started, as things do in this 21st century hellscape, with a flippant post on the socials: “Big editing project due tomorrow, so instead of doing that I might start training for a half-marathon.”

For the next three days, I neither finished the editing project nor followed through with training for a half-marathon. But I sure caught myself meandering the activewear section of a retail store and holding short shorts up to my waist and hoping, despite the evidence, that I was still a men’s medium, and paying actual money for the shorts – money I had not yet earned from editing.

These are absolutely the lengths I will go to to procrastinate, but this was not procrastination. This clothes-shopping was more serious, somehow; I was definitely still procrastinating in other ways that involved more pretending-that-this-rabbit-hole-is-work-related-research, but I was DAYDREAMING about running.

This, for the record, goes against my character. I’ve never truly enjoyed running. Or falsely enjoyed it. And I’ve done it enough to know that I’ll never touch this supposed “runner’s high” that runners talk about with that same nostalgic superiority that others use to remind you that they “lived in France” when a little prying reveals they visited Paris on a two-week college class trip. 

I legitimately ran almost 6 miles once. In a single go. It happened when I trained myself up to a 5k, which is the only thing we Americans say in metric because it sounds bigger than 3.1 miles when you don’t know conversions, which we don’t. I did this during that first year of Covid, which meant there were no public events so I never got a T-shirt to prove it. 

On this one run, I turned up a dirt road I’d never gone up before just to see it where it went. It reached a scenic overlook of sorts. (The closest I’ve come to the runner’s high.) I said Yay, pretty! and only then realized I had exhausted most of my 3.1 miles and had to get back home. Back home was more or less downhill, so I made it.

Strava tells me that was not the last run I ever did, but I could not tell you details of any run after that. Clearly that was my high-water mark.

Now my pants don’t fit quite so comfy, and I’m unable to concede that that’s just a natural part of being forty. Why should I accept that the rest of me has swollen along with the likelihood of my prostate swelling, too? (Public service announcement/note to self: Schedule first checkup for Men of a Certain Age.) 

I’d rather nudge myself down the path of aging sexily. Too late to transform myself into full zaddy by the time I take my dog out someplace that offers a free Father’s Day brunch? Possibly. But maybe I can stop myself from needing to buy new and looser Walmart-brand jeans on their Father’s Day sale. 

I had the shorts. I had the motivation. With nothing to hold me back, I stalled for, like, five metric weeks. 

Then this nugget of middle-aged wisdom hit me: if I did not run, and run soon, I would have to live the increasingly diminishing rest of my years with the knowledge that I failed to show up and take care of myself, when I was still barely young enough to do so without one or both of my legs falling off. 

This, I was OK with. 

But shopping for shorts had reminded me just how much I hate shopping for pants, and these puppies were not getting any looser. So I took myself for a run, and I made myself a promise: This was a no-pressure baseline outing. Let’s remind myself, I said, what it feels like to move – and let’s prove that I am actually capable of leaving the house. Those are the only purposes, I said. No judgment, I said, totally lying to myself.

Because of course I was going to judge myself – and harshly – against my own younger personal bests, and against anyone better than me, up to and including Olympians. I used to climb mountains on a bicycle; surely I could run some non-embarrassing distance. 

Immediately after I came back home, I flopped on my bed and wrote the preceding (in incoherent draft form) on my Notes app, in order to distract from wondering about the tingling sensation in my teeth. Should teeth really be tingling after running (and this is true) 5% of a half-marathon? I say “5% of a half-marathon,” because it is metric and thus sounds much better than “I quit at 0.66 miles.” Right after my fitness watch showed me that was my distance, it quit too. 

Will I actually push myself the whole way to completing a half-marathon registration form? I don’t know! But telling you all here that I’m CONSIDERING a half-marathon registration form ensures that I will have to reboot my entire writing career under a pen name if I don’t go through with it. 

Besides, the way the world is trending, running sure seems like a more useful skill to cultivate than copyediting.