To borrow an emphatically chortled declaration from the fourth stanza of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For,"...
...."But Yes, I'm Still Running."
I was feeling a bit remiss in my updates about my newfangled fitness initiative, but -- honestly -- there hasn't been all that much to tell. I started running back in mid-July primarily as a means of combatting my increasingly less-than-healthy lifestyle, but also as a way of finding focus, direction and clarity. This year started out poorly for me and has gotten successively worse as the months have rolled on. That hasn't stopped. Since I started running, my family weathered another blow, that being the death of my step-father in mid-August. The painful process of dealing with that loss -- and the logistical demands that accompany a death in the family -- have only strengthened my resolve. I don't just want to keep running, I positively need to keep running.
That all said, now that summer's over, there are new obstacles. I'd gotten a bit spoiled after spending much of my summer in Quogue. My morning runs out there found me slogging around a comparatively idyllic country block. Sure, it was a bit larger than Washington Square Park (the distance from start to finish on my Quogue route initially took me about ten minutes to complete ... shaved down to eight and a half minutes by early September), but I'd settled into a nice routine. Now that I'm back in NYC, it's back to Washington Square Park.
But the Park itself isn't my problem. My problem is that I'm on drop-off duty. As the responsibilities have shaken down, my wife usually makes the kids' lunches and takes care of their breakfast (I'm still largely all thumbs in the kitchen), while it's my gig to get them dressed, out the door and to school on time. That may sound simple, but if you've ever tried to wrangle an eight- and ten-year-old into executing these tasks with any semblance of efficiency, you know it can be a taller order than it seems.
Anyway, as a result of this, while I'd been toying with the idea of squeezing my runs in before these morning duties, I was finding that a bit complicated to pull off. As such, I'm now doing my run after I get back from the school drop-off detail. That's not a huge deal, but it means I'm not getting it done until about 9:00 AM or so.
By this point in the morning, Washington Square Park in September isn't the unpopulated garden of silence and solace that it is two hours earlier. Nope, running around it at this hour means ducking and weaving and wading through any number of obstacles -- foremost among them herds of the NYU student body, a sprawling demographic of disdainfully youthful human cattle, all decked out in pre-tattered flannel and "Cool Story Bro" tees. My curmudgeonly ire notwithstanding, it's still ultimately their turf. As much as I lament the NYU kids' return to the neighborhood at the end of every summer, the irritation they provide me is my own damn fault for choosing to live off of University Place. Thus, I puff, pant and awkwardly plod around the perfectly tanned, toned and tirelessly exposed young midriffs of the co-eds during my lap-and-a-half around the Park.
About a week back, I was engaged in a spirited discussion about running with my cousin, and he spoke with such certainty and zeal about the endorphin rush that results from certain increments of exertion, he being an accomplished runner himself. I just had to nod and feign understanding. It's not that I don't feel good after running, but I've yet to harness that natural high I keep hearing about. Again, I'd probably do well to curtail more excesses in my diet to make a more meaningful amount of progress, but it's the commitment to the physicality of running that keeps driving me.
Even though I don't run every day, on the days I don't do it, I feel a compulsion to compensate. I skipped a run yesterday, as I had to make a trip up to my late step-father's home in Connecticut. On the train ride home, I got off at the Harlem 125th Street stop -- and walked home to our apartment in the Village.
I haven't mastered it all yet, but I'll get there. I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable really calling myself a runner. I don't know that I'd ever feel confident in my abilities to try a half-marathon, as my afore-cited cousin encouraged me to do. I don't know that this will ever feel normal, or if I will ever feel normal again.
But yes, I'm still running.
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