On Running

I've been a fairly dedicated runner since I was about 18.  I got hooked back in 1995 when I was living in Boulder for the summer after my sophmore year in college. Thousands of miles and a few hunder pairs of ninety-dollar running shoes later, I still love my hour-long jaunts through the trails behind my house and, like many, I've come to depend on running for mental clarity, stress relief, mood regulation and a little bit of self-inflicted solitude. Perhaps most importantly, trail running has also provided me with that ever-essential connection to the natural world which is so lacking in most of our daily lives of endless email, 8 hour-a-day desk jobs, cell phones and all the other things that inhibit meaningful communication with other humans and our environment. I've never really cared about distance or times or mileage or any other means of measuring myself against others. I just like getting outside, seeing different places and watching the seasons change around my favorite loops through aspen meadows in the Colorado high country and the pinon and juniper forests nearer to my home.

I've run in some pretty wild places -- switchbacking up steep passes above treeline in the San Juans during the summer solstice, sub-zero mornings along the dirt roads of rural Vermont biting back tears and frozen fingers from the cold, the foggy beaches of central Chile, the coastal trail in Anchorage on a sunny summer evening with the alder trees sparkling against the bay, the Atacama desert with the snow-capped Andes at the horizon, hazy afternoons aside the Mississippi River in New Orleans dodging skinny stray dogs and broken glass, perfectly quiet mornings after a new snow along the Mesa Trail in Boulder. I've run in probably 20 other countries -- many where people just looked at me like they couldn't figure out what I was running from. I've run in Central Park, in the French Quarter, downtown Auckland and through the dense pine forest parks of Portland, Oregon. I've seen little moments of life in other places and right around the corner that I might never have experienced - the families of quiltros, or stray dogs, roaming the pre-dawn streets of Valparaiso, Chile looking for scraps in abandoned alleys, the smell of fresh bread rising in ovens along the cobblestone streets of Sienna, Italy, a small black bear startled by our approach one June morning a few years ago, the mist rising off Avalanche Creek near Carbondale in early fall, a family of foxes looking at me with wide eyes as they step gingerly across the street and hurry off to the safety of the tall grasses in the fields near our home. I've run with my headlamp the whole hour before the sun appears to the east and in the dim twilight of a summer evening. I've run with numerous friends, ex boyfriends, co-workers, my dog Phoebe and lots of other dogs and much of the time just by myself. I've run on most Christmases and Thanksgivings and almost always on my birthday on July 3rd. I've run through 2 years of college finals, 3 years of law school, 2 bar exams (one failed) and seven years of ups and mostly downs as an attorney. I've run through four break-ups (gladly at this point) and alot of New Orleans-style hangovers. I've had two bouts with a bad left IT band at the knee, some achy shins, a crick in my shoulder and an awful case of plantar fasciitis in my right foot that hurt so bad I felt sick to my stomach in the mornings from the pain getting out of bed.

Now I've got a much more serious injury and its going to be a long, long time before I run again. I didn't get to run on the morning of my wedding and it just about killed me. I had always pictured myself stepping out on my wedding day for a early-morning jog through wildflower meadows in whatever mountaintop setting we would ultimately choose for the exchange of our vows, clearing my head and wondering in amazement how I ever got there. But, as it has been said, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. And so I'll have to be content with my memories for a while and try to conjure up images of myself jogging for one-minute intervals along the South Shanahan Trail this July. Its going to be a long road back.