Running

Our sabbatical is drawing to a close, which means Jon and I are starting to assess what we’ve accomplished this year, and what we hope to continue learning and doing when we arrive back in the US. When I started this year, I had a few goals: improve my Spanish, learn Spanish for elementary mathematics, relax, not work nights, write a novel, vanquish my to-do list once and for all.

As you’re probably guessing by now, most of these didn’t come to pass. I did improve my Spanish, but never got off the couch to find a school that would help me observe/learn elementary mathematics lingo (though Nora’s math-related fits of ire have helped a ton). Jon will corroborate that the relaxing mostly didn’t occur, and given the time differential between the US, it ended up that we frequently had either meetings or played email catch-up between 9-11 PM.

However, this year had one unexpected benefit: I became a runner.

I actually began this year thinking that I already was a runner. I ran between three and four times a week in Arlington, usually about 3 miles a pop. [As Arlingtonians will attest, too, it was up and down a loooonnnggg hill].  I didn’t really come here planning on becoming better at running, but one day, while trying to avoid work and curious about why my friends all seem to be running marathons, I visited a runners’ training website.

What I discovered there is that I wasn’t a runner at all. The site seemed to suggest that unless you’re running 16 miles a week, you’re “below beginner” – meaning (horrors) a jogger. Being a jogger is so 70s. And the name is so suggestive of slogging – “a slogger” --  not exactly glamorous. The website suggested that 16 miles a week was the minimum respectable distance to be called a runner, and 25 put you at the basic level.

I didn’t read much more, figuring that I was pretty happy with whatever it was I was doing (slogging) and I’ve never had any sort of ambition in the area of marathoning or whatnot. But by two months later, I was running 25 miles a week. And really, really enjoying it.    

As a bonus, I also spent most of the year changing from a heel-strike running style to a ball-of-foot-strike running style. According to the New York Times, which writes obsessively about running style every 2-3 weeks, the ball strike will protect me from bad knees over the next 20 years or so.

So the capstone to this story is that the kids came home one day brimming with news: there’s a 10K in Alcobendas, and they’d decided that I should enter it. And I did. My time: 54:45.