30 Years Of Running

I realized today, as I was running in the ridiculously hot May DC weather, that I've been running for 30 years now. And I have yet to experience the so-called endorphin high that I've heard runners experience. Good thing that's not why I run.

I started running in college. My reasons for starting were many. First, my sister was a runner, and being 9 years apart in age, we didn't have much in common when we met up again in the Boston area at 18 and 27, respectively. She was getting a Masters at MIT. I was an undergrad at Boston University. My freshman year, I was her Calculus tutor, having just taken it in my senior year of high school, since she'd never had higher math in her life. I wouldn't say that either of us was ever very good at it, but we got her through the course. Which was the important part. Other than Calculus, we spent the occasional weekend day together and, somewhere along the line, running became something for us to do together. Boston has many paths on which to run, including several around the Charles River - the border between Boston where I lived and Cambridge where she did. So we started running together.

My second reason for running - and probably the impetus for starting, though I don't specifically remember this - is that I was overweight. And my sister was not. She talks about having been overweight at some point in her life, but I don't remember it. I think her version of being overweight was probably 10 pounds over her ideal. I was more like 60 pounds over mine, tipping the scales at over 200 lbs. Not that I looked that fat. But I was in fact that fat, much to my disgust and shame. So running with my skinny sister was an attempt to do something about that.

My sophomore year of college, I was a 10k - the Bonne Bell. Carol ran it too, easily and much more quickly than I did. I did actually finish it at a run, though it was a close thing and mostly through sheer force of will. Up to that point, I think the furthest I'd ever run was about 2 miles. I warned my boyfriend at the time that he might have to carry me up to my fifth floor walk-up dorm room. As it turned out, it wasn't that bad. But it would be many years before I would brave such as distance again.

Interestingly, my running actually started that particular boyfriend running too. He was also overweight (I was still overweight, though perhaps only 50 lbs by now) and wanted to do something about getting in shape. Running for him would become a lifelong passion. He would eventually become a distance runner, something I never achieved. When he and I dated again after college was many years past, just before my 29th birthday, I did try to get my mileage up so he and I could run longer distances together. At that point, I got up to 6 miles. But it was not comfortable, and I abandoned those distances shortly after he and I broke up for the second time.

And yet, running is still my default form of exercise, especially when the weather is at all nice outside. I am much more likely to put on my running shoes at the end of the day and take a 30-minute run, than I am to head to gym after work. And running, and a much stricter diet than I ate in college, has contributed to my being more fit. I gave up weighing myself years ago, but I think I'm not overweight anymore. Or at least not by much. On average, I run somewhere between 2 and 2-1/2 miles. 30 minutes most of the time, at a reasonably slow pace of 11-minute miles. Today, I ran for almost 40 minutes, getting ready for summer when clothes are much less prevalent.

So for 30 years, I've run about that far (somewhere between 2 and 3 miles) at least once or twice a week. Would it have been too much to have experienced at least one moment of euphoria from it? Apparently.