The book was ostensibly an autobiography about an accomplished academic’s life, but it was really about running

A couple of days after Pesach last year, it hit me. Covid was still here. The run-up to Pesach had been a shock of adrenaline: make Pesach happen… whatever… however… don’t organize the whole house, sweep the floors, cover the kitchen, people are dying, fighting for breath.

We thought we’d be redeemed that first Seder night, blasted out of our current Mitzrayim; or the seventh day, like Krias Yam Suf. But now it was half a week after Pesach, and Covid was lingering like an unwelcome guest.

No work, no shopping, no going out, the government pronounced, unless you’re exercising.

I worked, I logged my hours, I was productive. I didn’t exercise; it wasn’t my thing. There was a part of me that looked condescendingly at the joggers outside my window and thought: What, where, why? I have things to do.

But summoning the energy to work, sitting by my laptop at home, was getting to me. In the long hours indoors, I read a book I hadn’t found time for before, because I hadn’t thought it relevant. Covid was making me slow down.

The book was ostensibly an autobiography about an accomplished academic’s life, but it was really about running. His dad had forced him to run as a boy, and would follow along with the car to make sure he’d do his runs. The narrator resented that, but slowly, despite himself, got into it, and how.

“Running helped me fight… and cope with all that life’s thrown at me,” he wrote. The “buzz” of this “healthiest addiction” helped him get through adversity, and there was lots of it in his story.

But it was the little details that got me. Each chapter started with bits and pieces about his daily runs: kilometers, distances, time. What the weather was like. How he felt when he ran. There was something there, a love for running, an appreciation for nature. He made it seem almost simple — how you could get moving, get in touch with your health, with yourself.

I thought, why not me?

I found a program called Couch to 5k. It was a nine-week program that would take me from the couch to being able to run five kilometers at a stretch. The runs were half an hour each. How hard could they be? I donned sneakers, downloaded the tracks, and discovered that the park near my house didn’t end at the river. It started there.

A five-minute warm-up walk over a bridge. Then 60 seconds of running. A 90- second recovery walk. Sixty. Ninety. Sixty. Ninety. I was breathless, sweating, by the third round of 60-second runs. I couldn’t do it. You may be getting tired, but keep going, the track said into my ears. Repeat this run three times on alternate days of the week.

I made it through the first week, even if each time it took me a good hour to recover from a few combined minutes of running. For once in my life, there was nowhere else to go. I could justify the time.

The second week of the program increased the running time: 90-second run, 90-second recovery walk. One-and-a-half minutes seemed like forever. I counted the seconds down in my mind, but I’d reach zero way before the time was actually up. In those first few weeks, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, second by excruciating second, fighting for distance, keeping going because something told me I could. That I could feel what the champion had felt.

The third week doubled the running time to three-minute runs. I can’t do this, I thought. I did the five-minute warm-up walk and then swung into the run. I felt myself leap, felt my feet fall into the run, embrace it. I managed the three minutes, did the recovery walk, and I could do three minutes again. Birds were wheeling overhead, gravel flew beneath my feet, and I was outrunning the river.

Maybe I’d caught the buzz I’d read about in the book. I told some friends about the program, and I, longtime workaholic, was encouraging them through the first weeks, while I sometimes sailed, sometimes struggled, through the middle weeks.

I’d have to repeat a run, repeat a whole week, until I felt confident to go on, but gradually, I was developing endurance. I got on the trail, closed my eyes, felt sun and shadow on my face. I listened to nature. I cleared my mind. I stopped counting seconds and waited for the instructor’s voice on the track. Sometimes it would surprise me. I started to recover faster, and I felt my stamina increasing.

Often I listened to music ass I ran, so many songs about trust and faith, pushing on, forging on. They meant this metaphorically, but I felt them speaking straight to me, that woman who was pushing through, pushing on, past fields and bridges, when I thought my legs would give out, when I felt I couldn’t go on.

The metaphors weren’t lost on me. In the time I ran, I thought and breathed and tried to work things out in my mind. Ideas flew past, thoughts, memories, insights. From a passing tree, from a cloud, from inside me. What to say to this one, how to deal with that…

Spring gave way to summer, and the world got dressed in roses and lavenders and greens, and I was privy to it. At the beginning of the summer, I’d gotten to 15 consecutive minutes of running, within a half-hour lap that included shorter, build-up runs as well. The 18-minute consecutive loomed, then the 20.

But 15 was where I was at. I couldn’t possibly do more. A friend who’d got on the program much later had long conquered the 18-minute. “Try it, just try it,” she said.

But I’d found my comfort within the stretch. For weeks I did the 15-minute run again and again, until one day, I ran on. It was upward from there. By the end of the summer, I’d done the 18, I’d done the 28, and I got to five kilometers in half an hour. The program that was supposed to take nine weeks took me five months, but I got there. I’d broken through the barriers of the “type” I thought I was.

I learned about myself. I could do something I wasn’t naturally good at. I could start to care about my health. I could give myself this time in beautiful daylight when I could’ve achieved xyz. Who said I had to achieve something concrete to be worthy of every minute?

Running changed me. Running wasn’t a block of time I could control. I’d get out and it would start to pour, or I’d have to stop early because my energy was flagging. One minute I was running along, leaping on gravel, listening to music, flying high, and the next I was flat on the floor with torn stockings. I limped home. When I started running gingerly a week later, I felt grateful, humbled.

Today, I was running in the park. I looked at the time. I’d been running for 18 minutes. I thought of how I couldn’t do it, how I’d stayed at 15-minute runs for weeks on end. The crazy thing about the 18-minute run is that by the time you get there, you feel invincible. Yes, you’re breathing hard, sweating, but by 18 you’re on a roll, you get that runner’s high, you can do anything.

I ran past the trees, under the endless sky. Apartment buildings border the park, hundreds of windows facing the path I was on. I thought of the woman on the couch, looking out the window at runners like me, and thinking she couldn’t do it. I thought of the world she’d almost closed the door on, and I ran on, past 18 minutes, past five kilometers. On and on.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 766)