Running for the joy of it

At this point running is just built into my veins. You can’t take it away from me.

A few years ago I was playing hide and seek combined with tag outside in the dark. At this point I have to callout that the combination of those three things is not wise. Hide and seek is fantastic, tag is even better. Being outside in the dark is lovely, especially on a moonlit night. All three in unison tend not to end well for me.

So, as a mid-thirties something man I was enjoying a game in the dark. Toward the end of the ill-fated adventure I had a chance to sprint to base and avoid capture. I’m a runner, but not a sprinter. However, every now and then I give it a shot and feel like I’m in the old movie Born Free. Without thinking, and imagining myself a thirteen years old I sprinted headlong downhill toward the assigned spot of safety.

Flash back to that childhood version of me, in a similiar night game of tag and hide and seek. I’d been found out, but had my legs, and was using every ounce of energy to put distance between me and my pursuers, dashing madlong into the dark, moving away from the lights. Both moments stand out vividly to me. In the earlier memory I was going fast, giving all my attention to forward progress into the dark, confident that the path in front of me would provide hiding spots once I cleared open ground. In the later moment I knew to move with hesitancy, but ultimately the desire to win won out.

The problem, both as an adult and teen, with running in the dark, is that we just don’t know what we’re running into. Though it was a bright enough light I forgot about one small thing, a thing that could easily be missed in the daytime if I wasn’t paying attention. A thing I knew of, but hadn’t paid much attention to in the years traversing the property. One moment I'm dashing away, laughing, out of breath, enjoying the moment of escape. I was going to win, no matter what. Then I felt the hot sting of the metal line as it caught both shins and stopped the forward momentum instantly. If you’ve seen Men of Honor you get the idea. Although thankfully the maximum force applied was only my skinny hundredish pound body running forward, and not the thousands of pounds of chainlink uncoiling.

Looking back that moment could have gone much differently. After the likely scream and gasp and catching my breath I managed to get myself back up and hobble toward the light, mad lines of red crossing my legs. Perhaps an x-ray scan could show proof of the moment, but then again there’s a lifetime of proof from many similar careless adventures.

Back to the mid thirties moment. I knew, somehow, somewhere deep inside me, that sprinting at night wasn’t safe. Most of my childhood I got hurt because I didn’t know where my limbs started and my mind ended. I’d bump into things, run into things, and generally suffer annoyance and mild pain as a result. All those adventures led me to eventually, slowly, have a bit of caution when trying something.

However, in the moment of the game, when you’re so focused on the win, you don’t think about the possible alternatives. Not really. Some hesitation comes in, but overall you just want to have fun. So I again dashed downhill, sprinting across rocks and over a water feature.

Two things.

First, I wear slippers in the house. They’re comfy, and I don’t like the feel of dirt on my bare feet. That doesn’t mean our house is dirty, on the contrary we’re quite clean. But with pets and kids things get messy, so I just wear slippers. For years my preferred indoor shoe was a pair of Santa Cruz Crocs. They’re comfy, but have the added benefit of not looking like Crocs. When they wear down I turn them into on-the-property shoes, opting to wear them outside and swapping for the newer model when I’m back inside.

So on this eventful night I chose to wear my old worn down Crocs, as opposed to running shoes. The challenge with Crocs is the high soles matched with weak support means you might as well be running on clogs. My ankles are strong from trail running, but not enough to compensate for the stupidity of ill chosen footwear. Also, as mentioned before, I turned my inside slippers into on-the-property outside shoes because they were old and worn down. So the tread, already woefully inadequate, was all but non-existant.

Second, the water feature I was clambering down, headed toward the designated safe spot, has a basin at the bottom, comprosed of an old metal barrel, roughly four feet in diameter. I knew about this watering hole of course, and jumped from rock to rock, intent to make my way around it and to the grass below.

However, in the darkness I missed my last step by an inch, and my foot caught in the slight crack between the rock and metal. That would have been fine, had I chosen to wear proper shoes I might have been able to catch myself and pull back. But the combination of my force applied to the wrong spot, along with snagging my foot on the old rusty barrel, caused an unexpected turn in direction. One moment I’m moving to the left, and the next I’m turning right. My foot caught, I twisted my ankle the outward, not the typical way you’d twist as a runner, and my entire leg slid forward, catching the metal, gravity pulling me downward. Again I let out a cry, probably not a scream, but it did hurt after all.

Three years later I still have scars on my leg from that moment. A second reminder to not play hide and seek tag in the dark. Thankfully I was able to get into physical therapy, and thankfully everything healed fine, my bum knee notwithstanding. The one bit of advice that I followed from my PT was to not run. She said I’d be tempted, I’d want to—all runners have the same problem; they need the drug of running. But I held out five weeks, not running at all, only testing the leg again under her guidance on a treadmill. Thankfully everything healed and I’m back to running like normal.

No matter how bad my day is going, no matter the stresses or anxiety or chaos or weight I feel under, nothing can make a day running feel bad. It’s just not possible.

There are two days I look forward to the most while running. Well, first I love running in the rain. It’s always magical. But, beyond that running in 90+ degree heat along a river is something I look forward to each year. You can jump in along the river at anytime and cool down. But my other favorite day is running in fresh snow, pushing forward through the powder in my winter trail shoes.

Today was that kind of day, and it was just perfect. Roughly nine inches of snow, and most of the trail untouched by any other human. You just can’t have a bad day after that.