On running...

My mind has been on running for some time now and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts here...

First, the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher during an early morning run in Memphis, TN has me thinking about running and safety. Eliza was running at 4:30 am which seems really early to be out and running.  But... in thinking about that time and activity myself, I think it's likely that I've run as early as 4:30 am on a handful of dates this year alone.  I wake up early many mornings and most days that I do so, I run. I have felt a twinge of, "This is really early- maybe I should wait until 5:00 am." But then I reason that 5:00 am is as dark as 4:30 am so it doesn't make much of a difference. Also the area that we live in is safe. That isn't to say that crime doesn't (or couldn't, obviously) happen here. But one generally doesn't fear for one's safety in a town that consistently places very high on the safest places to live in Ohio. 

Since I began running consistently as a form of exercise about thirty years ago, I've run outside in rural, urban and suburban settings. Somewhat surprisingly, the closest encounter (that I'm aware of anyway) with a potentially nefarious person was when I was running in rural Indiana. I was home for a college break and went out for run. Safety issues inherently exist in the country by dint of the physical reality of narrow roads, nonexistent shoulders and no sidewalks. I was out running when a guy on a motorcycle stopped when he encountered me. He idled his cycle and asked me, "Do you want to go for a ride with me?"  Clearly I was out running for exercise. Why would I want to stop my run to go on a motorcycle ride with a stranger? If he had intentions of harming me, he couldn't have thrown me in his trunk since he had no trunk. But just ask Tess in Tess of the d'Urbervilles if trunks or any kind of motorized vehicle are necessary for harm to befall a woman on a country lane. I told the man that I didn't want a ride anywhere. In the distance, the unmistakable sound of a vehicle approaching drowned out the guy's response. But he drove away which was all I cared about.  

The vehicle whose motor I'd heard was a pick up truck and when the truck slowed down as it neared me the driver lowered his window so he could talk to me. The man in the truck said to me, "That guy on the motorcycle who was just talking to you," (yes, in the span of about twenty seconds, two different guys decided to stop me on my run) "was he giving you any trouble?" I repeated to him what the guy in the motorcycle asked me. The truck driver said he wanted to make sure that everything was OK and that the guy on the motorcycle wasn't bothering me.  My knight in shining Carhart! I will never know if the guy on the motorcycle left because he heard the truck coming or not but I am thankful that the truck came down the country lane and that the driver checked on me. The incident and the two men represent to me the dichotomy of the nature of guys: potentially harmful (I truly don't know if the guy on the motorcycle meant to harm me- his question could have been innocuous). We know from unfortunate instances like the one in Memphis that women are vulnerable to the whims of evil men who seek to harm them.  But men are also potentially heroic- men have a history of laying down their lives for woman and children and wonderful, caring, chivalrous men like the guy in the truck who took the time to check up on me exist. 

Second, the Air Force Marathon is always held in September. I ran the AF marathon enough times that I equate the month of September with the marathon. When I was in my first year of law school at the University of Dayton, I read that the Air Force was going to hold (have? sponsor? not sure what the correct verb is) a marathon for the first time at nearby Wright Patterson AFB. I decided to sign up for it. My normal run was about seven miles so I figured that with a little bit of training, I could run nineteen more. As it turns out, I inadequately trained. During training, I didn't have a watch with GPS to know how many miles I was running (not sure those watches even existed back in the late 20th century; if they did they were out of my poverty level existence budget!). The longest training run that I did was for 2 1/2 hours which probably meant that I ran 16 miles or so. However, I managed to pull off a decent marathon time (just over four hours) and never stopped running (just slowed down A LOT at the end as my long distance fitness was lacking due to... not running a lot of truly long distance during training). The marathon running bug was thus born. I ran many more Air Force Marathons and some other ones as well. Now my marathon running days are behind me but I have pride (healthy, I believe!) in putting in the hard, consistent work that marathon training entails.

I won't show pictures for every marathon that I ran because I don't have pictures of every nearly every marathon. I saved some memorabilia from the first couple marathons that I did and now I'm glad that I did so. 

Nowadays, race results are posted online. But back in 1997, when high speed internet was not the world wide web standard, participants were mailed a booklet of the results/ individual placements.

Why, if I hadn't saved the booklet (and got it out just now to snap a picture), I would have gone to my grave forgetting that I placed in the top ten in my age group (not that impressive as there weren't too many runners but it's still fun to see my name listed in the top ten).

In 2000, I ran the Flying Pig marathon with a buddy- my embryo Jacob! We made a pretty good team if my(/our) finish time is any indication but I do blame him for me getting sick on the course a couple of times along the course.

Another hot late summer day, another marathon: the last two AFMs that I ran, the weather was unseasonably hot and humid which made the long run that much more uncomfortable. 

Almost done: when the AF museum is behind you, that is a sign that you've run 26 miles and only have .2 to go. 

One really neat thing about the marathon being on an AFB is getting to see huge aircraft up close

Two years in a row, Alyssa's soccer team at the time, CUP, had soccer tournaments (and won) the same weekend as the AFM so of course we posed with our hardware.

Some medals from the marathons that I've run- In between the first marathon that I ran and the last one that I ran, the following events occurred in my life: I graduated from law school, I got married, I began a career, I started a family and was blessed with three kids, I ended my career to stay at home with the kids, I lost a parent (which brought me down to zero parents), I started working part time when Alyssa went to elementary school, and was a parent to two teenagers, Jacob and Abby. So in many pivotal moments in my life, there was a good chance that I was training for a marathon, had just run a marathon, or was about to start training for a marathon.

Third, Alyssa running cross country and that is in the fall so I am thinking about running because Alyssa is running every day except for one rest day a week. She started cross country her freshman year of high school. Meets started late summer of 2020 and went into the fall. 2020 beheld so much bad- cross country was one bright spot. By the fall of 2020 we didn't have toilet paper shortages but, goodness, did we have a lot of things going on in the world that didn't pass the stink test. From many politicians engaging in anything from hypocritical to chicanerous to downright criminal behavior, to previously held medical protocols being abandoned, to the science being usurped to fulfill an agenda, it was a difficult time for anybody who questioned what legacy media, big tech, and many politicians espoused about the pandemic. I was super grateful, and I hope that Alyssa was, too, to witness a truth about the physical world that was immutable by the forces that were wreaking much havoc due to the pandemic. Namely, that putting in the hard work day by day, week by week, her running would improve. Her 5k time improved by almost four minutes from the first meet of the season to the last meet. She went from being a middle of the pack runner to one of the top few on her team.  

I am grateful to God for giving me the ability to run, for granting me safety when running, for allowing me the leisure time to train for long distance events, and for the opportunity to see one of my own kids running. May I never take any of it for granted.