Running in Slow Motion

“Yeah!” I shouted as I crested the hill. “Oh, yeah! That’s how it’s done!”

A dozen pairs of liquid brown eyes watched me as I reached the top of our rural Pennsylvania driveway. The neighbor ladies were unaccustomed to such outbursts because I usually ran in silence. They observed me for a moment from behind long lashes and then, according to some unspoken signal, returned to their business.

While the lovely ladies were eminently capable of outrunning me, and dedicated vegetarians, it might surprise you to learn that our neighbors are not especially health-conscious. In fact, I caught one girl chewing on a plastic bottle last week. Perhaps I should mention that these neighbors are cows.

I continued the cool-down portion of my run, serving as both a reward for reaching my goal and a requirement of documenting the effort (I simply cannot use the tiny face of my FitBit while running). I’ve quickly developed a love-hate relationship with the little thing but that is a topic for another day.

My celebratory shout was short-lived and, honestly, rather wheezy. I had finished another training run on my way to an eventual 5K trail run in a nearby park, scheduled for the summer solstice. I experienced some chagrin when I began ‘training’ to run a distance of 3 miles, since it seemed but a few years ago that I could hike 10 miles with a 60-pound pack at 7000 feet above sea level. 

Age and pandemics and unemployment and way too much sitting had taken their collective toll – by Christmas 2020, I was in the worst shape of my life. I had to do something. In the spring, once we were free from the necessity of awaiting our landlord’s front-end loader to clear snow from our driveway, I began running. I had no real goal in mind until I saw a flyer for the solstice run.

I’ve hiked all my life, and run in a few road races, but never done much trail running. Indeed, I spent too many years in the intermountain west, where I saw trail running as a great way to surprise bears, cougars, moose and elk, which never ends well (here is a really good article about just such an encounter and all the resulting problems. And it references a well-regarded bear biologist I met years ago when she was doing research in Big Bend National Park!). When I relocated to the east, I knew the risks of such wildlife encounters were minimal but the narrow, winding roads of rural Pennsylvania and general state of distracting driving in the world today left me unwilling to run on the asphalt.

As a result, I have run many miles around our rural property as well as up and down our driveway. These endless circles are a source of curiosity in an agricultural landscape. Farmers peer from tractor cockpits crowded with computers, staring in wonder at someone who has to time to exercise. The woman across the street watches with bemused interest as she tends her garden. Bleary-eyed long-haul truck drivers, leaving the local warehouses, do a double take. By far, the cows are my most interested neighbors, running to the fence to watch me, chasing me, then eventually losing interest until I circle back again.

Finding time and energy to train has not been easy, as I work six days a week at two jobs for 50+ hours. As the neighbors and cows can attest, though, I’ve put in the work. The plodding, wheezing, stumbling work. As my runs get longer, hotspots are broadcasting blister locations and my psyche retreats further from the pain (hence the uncharacteristically jubilant outburst at the beginning of this tale.)

I won’t have the cows cheering in late June but a few friends are promising to show up. I’ve already warned them that this run will not be a pretty one. My goal is to finish, complete with bad form, a fair to terrible race time, and no fanfare. I can explain this objective in no more simple terms than this:  I will finish this race.

No matter how I get there – whether I arrive strong and happy or crawl across the finish line – my arrival will be worth celebrating.