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summer 2025
Chapter 4
Tuesday, July 15th
So the good news is that I ran a mile without walking yesterday. The bad news is that it felt terrible the entire time.
About two minutes in, I started to feel my fight or flight response kicking in. More specifically, a strong flight response. I wanted to get the heck away from this fucking run.
It’s not like I was in physical pain, but my body was definitely sending urgent signals to my brain begging for it to stop. Or at least walk! But I didn’t until I ran one mile.
I imagine that this is part of what that “runner’s high” is supposed to help with. At some point, my brain is supposed to be flooded with numbing running juice. Then my body will stop feeling under attack and start feeling athletic. But the only experience of runner’s high I’ve had so far came 45 minutes into a workout. I’m hoping that I’ll be done with my three miles before then, so it seems of little help.
Some quick internet research has informed me that part of the key to runner’s high is finding a balance in pushing yourself without pushing too hard. If you ask me, I think that it is pretty rude of my body to be so withholding of its numbing running juice. Aren’t the difficult runs the days I most need a runner’s high? It reminds me of a time I tried to look up tips for growing a beard. The list of steps I found encouraged me to reduce anxiety, increase happiness, and get regular exercise. But I ask you this: If I had a real handle on my anxiety, depression, and exercise routine, would I be googling “how to actually grow a beard” at one in the morning? I don’t think so!
What I’ve found out about my body is that it is not the sort of friend that picks you up when you are feeling down or catches you when you fall. When things start to go wrong, it throws the car in neutral and looks at me like, “Shouldn’t you do something about this?”
And if you are asking why I am talking about my body like it is somehow separate from me, I noticed that, too. While I’m not generally one for Cartesian dualism, running has certainly presented me with a worldview where some parts of myself are on my side and some parts are rooting against me at every turn.
***
Wednesday, July 16th
I spent my designated running time for today crying. It’s not that anything particularly bad happened today. It’s more that I’ve been feeling depressed lately and somehow found myself laying on the floor listening to Phoebe Bridgers. If it is any consolation, crying for an hour makes my body feel almost as shitty as running.
***
Thursday, July 17th
Today, I spent thirty minutes doing intervals of 3.5 minutes running and 1.5 minutes walking. My biggest problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking, “How am I supposed to be breathing?” I’ve definitely had periods during this project where I have felt out of breath, but none where I had forgotten how to breathe entirely. I found myself trying out different breathing strategies (hard and fast, slow and measured, in time to my steps, etc.) only to cycle onto the next when I started to feel like I was drowning.
Some brief internet research has reassured me that I’m not the only bozo forgetting how to perform basic bodily functions while running. There are actually a decent number of articles about how to breathe while running. Unfortunately, most of these articles offer some form of the same advice: make sure you are breathing deeply and then experiment to see what is right for you. I don’t know what magic breathing advice I expected to receive, but this feels more than a little half-assed.
Multiple articles recommended practicing deep breaths at home before taking it out on a run. I decided to follow their advice and found I didn’t mind it. It’s kinda like meditation, but I still get to listen to my tunes.
Breathing questions aside, I was able to get into enough of a rhythm to finish my workout. This is by far the longest intervals of running I have done so far. That feels like a real win.
***
Saturday, July 19th
They say that you should listen to your body, but I want to put some of that onus back on my body. It could communicate more directly.
As this project has gone on, I’ve had moments of clear knee pain, back pain, and leg stiffness. I have tried to address these directly. Some rest. Some stretching and light movement. Lots of hydration. But for all of those A plot running pains, I’ve had B and C plot running pains that have either gone under the radar or have been too ambiguous to address head on. Left to fester, these B and C plots have started their own devilish new show. I don’t know how to describe what is going on in my body. Imagine replacing 10% of the wood in a home with cardboard and then letting a pig loose inside. Honestly, I feel fucking crazy.
I would like to believe that there is some hump I need to get over and then I will feel in touch with my active body in a new and exciting way. But maybe all of the confused and conflicted murmurs I’m hearing is my body shouting, “Stop fucking running!”
***
Monday, July 21st
Yesterday, I went on a run and then went to Burgerfest. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. Once I was done with my hard run, I would be hungry and primed for burgers. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was going to spend all of Burgerfest walking around and standing on concrete. My legs revolted. When I finally sat down, I realized that it was going to be a long while before I moved again.
Hindsight. One of these days I have to figure out how to use it before it is too late.
***
Wednesday, July 22nd
As I have been thinking more about breathing, I am starting to pay more attention to my local air quality. Turns out that the air quality yesterday was awful. So instead of running outside, I headed to the gym and ran on the elliptical for an hour.
Being on the elliptical reminds me just how hard running really is. I kept up a hearty pace for a solid hour without any issues. Don’t get me wrong, I felt the burn. But I stayed calmly in the pocket the entire time and could have kept going if some elliptical based emergency required it. After I run with my actual feet on the stupid sidewalk for ten minutes, I feel like a half finished Jenga tower in the bar car of a runaway train. Which raises an important question: Why on earth is running so much harder?
For a while, I was beating myself up about having so much trouble running. Almost every sport requires some amount of running. Am I really in such worse shape than every eleven year old in the world? But then I remembered that early humans started long distance running as a form of hunting. They would chase animals until their prey collapsed from exhaustion. Since humans sweat, their bodies could cool off without slowing down. Animals who cool themselves by panting can’t pant while running. Instead, they would overheat and die. Distance runners like to repeat the mythic story of the Marathon runner carrying a message across the Greek peninsula, but carrying messages is relatively new to the running game. In truth, marathon running is something closer to boxing; a violence once needed for survival turned into sport and aesthetic to the detriment of the body of the athletes competing.
I wonder how many times early humans found themselves on the losing end of a long run. How many people found themselves collapsing before their prey? When your weapon is endurance, you are grinding yourself down at the same time. I’ve seen people at the end of a marathon. That is not what victory looks like.
So the good news is that I ran a mile without walking yesterday. The bad news is that it felt terrible the entire time.
About two minutes in, I started to feel my fight or flight response kicking in. More specifically, a strong flight response. I wanted to get the heck away from this fucking run.
It’s not like I was in physical pain, but my body was definitely sending urgent signals to my brain begging for it to stop. Or at least walk! But I didn’t until I ran one mile.
I imagine that this is part of what that “runner’s high” is supposed to help with. At some point, my brain is supposed to be flooded with numbing running juice. Then my body will stop feeling under attack and start feeling athletic. But the only experience of runner’s high I’ve had so far came 45 minutes into a workout. I’m hoping that I’ll be done with my three miles before then, so it seems of little help.
Some quick internet research has informed me that part of the key to runner’s high is finding a balance in pushing yourself without pushing too hard. If you ask me, I think that it is pretty rude of my body to be so withholding of its numbing running juice. Aren’t the difficult runs the days I most need a runner’s high? It reminds me of a time I tried to look up tips for growing a beard. The list of steps I found encouraged me to reduce anxiety, increase happiness, and get regular exercise. But I ask you this: If I had a real handle on my anxiety, depression, and exercise routine, would I be googling “how to actually grow a beard” at one in the morning? I don’t think so!
What I’ve found out about my body is that it is not the sort of friend that picks you up when you are feeling down or catches you when you fall. When things start to go wrong, it throws the car in neutral and looks at me like, “Shouldn’t you do something about this?”
And if you are asking why I am talking about my body like it is somehow separate from me, I noticed that, too. While I’m not generally one for Cartesian dualism, running has certainly presented me with a worldview where some parts of myself are on my side and some parts are rooting against me at every turn.
***
Wednesday, July 16th
I spent my designated running time for today crying. It’s not that anything particularly bad happened today. It’s more that I’ve been feeling depressed lately and somehow found myself laying on the floor listening to Phoebe Bridgers. If it is any consolation, crying for an hour makes my body feel almost as shitty as running.
***
Thursday, July 17th
Today, I spent thirty minutes doing intervals of 3.5 minutes running and 1.5 minutes walking. My biggest problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking, “How am I supposed to be breathing?” I’ve definitely had periods during this project where I have felt out of breath, but none where I had forgotten how to breathe entirely. I found myself trying out different breathing strategies (hard and fast, slow and measured, in time to my steps, etc.) only to cycle onto the next when I started to feel like I was drowning.
Some brief internet research has reassured me that I’m not the only bozo forgetting how to perform basic bodily functions while running. There are actually a decent number of articles about how to breathe while running. Unfortunately, most of these articles offer some form of the same advice: make sure you are breathing deeply and then experiment to see what is right for you. I don’t know what magic breathing advice I expected to receive, but this feels more than a little half-assed.
Multiple articles recommended practicing deep breaths at home before taking it out on a run. I decided to follow their advice and found I didn’t mind it. It’s kinda like meditation, but I still get to listen to my tunes.
Breathing questions aside, I was able to get into enough of a rhythm to finish my workout. This is by far the longest intervals of running I have done so far. That feels like a real win.
***
Saturday, July 19th
They say that you should listen to your body, but I want to put some of that onus back on my body. It could communicate more directly.
As this project has gone on, I’ve had moments of clear knee pain, back pain, and leg stiffness. I have tried to address these directly. Some rest. Some stretching and light movement. Lots of hydration. But for all of those A plot running pains, I’ve had B and C plot running pains that have either gone under the radar or have been too ambiguous to address head on. Left to fester, these B and C plots have started their own devilish new show. I don’t know how to describe what is going on in my body. Imagine replacing 10% of the wood in a home with cardboard and then letting a pig loose inside. Honestly, I feel fucking crazy.
I would like to believe that there is some hump I need to get over and then I will feel in touch with my active body in a new and exciting way. But maybe all of the confused and conflicted murmurs I’m hearing is my body shouting, “Stop fucking running!”
***
Monday, July 21st
Yesterday, I went on a run and then went to Burgerfest. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. Once I was done with my hard run, I would be hungry and primed for burgers. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was going to spend all of Burgerfest walking around and standing on concrete. My legs revolted. When I finally sat down, I realized that it was going to be a long while before I moved again.
Hindsight. One of these days I have to figure out how to use it before it is too late.
***
Wednesday, July 22nd
As I have been thinking more about breathing, I am starting to pay more attention to my local air quality. Turns out that the air quality yesterday was awful. So instead of running outside, I headed to the gym and ran on the elliptical for an hour.
Being on the elliptical reminds me just how hard running really is. I kept up a hearty pace for a solid hour without any issues. Don’t get me wrong, I felt the burn. But I stayed calmly in the pocket the entire time and could have kept going if some elliptical based emergency required it. After I run with my actual feet on the stupid sidewalk for ten minutes, I feel like a half finished Jenga tower in the bar car of a runaway train. Which raises an important question: Why on earth is running so much harder?
For a while, I was beating myself up about having so much trouble running. Almost every sport requires some amount of running. Am I really in such worse shape than every eleven year old in the world? But then I remembered that early humans started long distance running as a form of hunting. They would chase animals until their prey collapsed from exhaustion. Since humans sweat, their bodies could cool off without slowing down. Animals who cool themselves by panting can’t pant while running. Instead, they would overheat and die. Distance runners like to repeat the mythic story of the Marathon runner carrying a message across the Greek peninsula, but carrying messages is relatively new to the running game. In truth, marathon running is something closer to boxing; a violence once needed for survival turned into sport and aesthetic to the detriment of the body of the athletes competing.
I wonder how many times early humans found themselves on the losing end of a long run. How many people found themselves collapsing before their prey? When your weapon is endurance, you are grinding yourself down at the same time. I’ve seen people at the end of a marathon. That is not what victory looks like.
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