It’s been a while since I’ve had a running buddy. In fact, it’s been almost as long as I’ve posted.
(brief tangent: for the one person out there waiting with bated breath for a new post [Hi mom!...actually I don't even think she cares much]), I just haven’t been feeling the blogging of late. It’s been a case of nothing much to say, and to be honest, even less time to say it. Between a wedding in — gah! — two weeks, the end-of-semester grading onslaught, and the holidays…oh, and holding down a full-time job, too…it’s been about as much as I can do to drag myself out of bed in the morning [at 5:00 most days lately...more on that later] and back into it at night. I think/hope this will all change in the new year, when I more or less get my life back. Ok, end tangent.)
But I love this time of year. I especially love running this time of year. Call me crazy, but there’s just something about being out in the dark (because the only time I think I actually see the sun is on the weekend or on my way to work in the morning) and quiet, surrounded by white, your footfalls muted — crunching lightly instead of pounding on hot pavement.
It’s also the only time of year that I run just to run. To get out of the house and breate some fresh, sharp air into stagnated lungs. There are no races on the horizon, no training paces to maintain, no specific amount of miles to log. It’s just me, a pair of shoes, a pair of dogs, and the road. And if I’m lucky, there’s an extra pair of shoes involved.
Because the best runs of the off-season are those done with a buddy. On a weekend morning, with no idea of how far you’re going to go that day, or how fast. When the thing is not far/fast, but catching up — the same as some do over coffee or wine. When the thing is not second-guessing yourself about split times and how today is going to play into the race coming up, but where you’re going to go have brunch after the run. When the thing is just to be there — outside, running beside someone.
The first run Krista and I ever did together was in the winter. We hadn’t met beforehand. At all. Ever. In that way, it was very much first-date-ish.
But over the course of a leasurely seven miles, we chatted about topics that it would take new acquantances months of coffee-klatching to broach: her unraveling marriage, my ex of six years, when/where/why both relationships went south, what we hoped for in the “after” of both, our families, jobs, and on and on.
Because that’s how it is with running buddies.
There isn’t one woman whom I’ve run with regularly who I’m still not in touch with, who still holds a special place in my heart. I don’t completely understand it — the phenomena of the running buddy — but I have absolute faith in it.
Because there’s just something about covering a handful of miles next to someone…about having a person to listen to and contradict (or, even better, comiserate in) my bitching about said running…about getting lost in conversation with them to the steady one-two hum of a synchronized footfall…about learning how to push yourself, and learning when doing a little pushing is not warranted, but necessary…about sharing those breaths, those steps, those miles.
Or, as the author of this wonderful, must-read-for-running-buddies-everywhere, says, “Any friendship that is based on running is, in essence, about accrual-of time, of miles, of intimacy built over a lot of small steps forward. It sneaks up on you that way, I think. It can seem merely enjoyable until you need it for more.”
Or when it’s gone.
For the time being, I run alone. And I hope that will eventually change. Not just becuase I want it to, but because I need it to.
And for my running buddies at large, I miss you and love you. You know who you are.
