My Relationship With Running
I used to be fast. Like winning road races and sprinting-past-defenders-to-score-goals fast. That was when I was in first and second grade. A skinny, pale kid with freckles running like the wind.
My introduction to road races was a 2-mile fun run in California. The medal is buried somewhere in a collection of items from my childhood, either in my mom’s house or in my basement. I remember running alongside my dad, who, unbeknownst to me, paced me the whole time. Now, my dad was actually fast, and I’m sure this 2-mile fun run was a bit of a bore; I imagine after we drove home, he dropped me off, and headed back out to pound the pavement for another 8-10 miles.
There was a moment in the race where I spotted a classmate of mine named Michael. He was an athletic kid, the over-competitive kid that would start fights in P.E. class He was a California kid through and through - the kind of blond hair and tanned skin that I can only assume he’s catching a wave at this very moment. Early on in the race he came over and taunted me, zooming past us and disappearing into the crowd. This was not okay; I wanted to chase after him, so I lifted my knees and took off. My dad’s voice caught me like a lasso, he sidled up to me and counseled me - I needed to save my energy and I wasn’t going to finish the race if I sprinted now. That was one of the first metaphorical lessons my dad taught me; he didn’t know it and neither did I. In that moment, he just didn’t want me taking off only to turn tired and grumpy.
As we neared the finish line, my dad let me sprint the final stretch. I crossed the finish line and immediately started looking around for Michael, but he was nowhere to be found. My small brain probably thought he had finished and was already on his way home. My dad caught up with me, he stood out in his tiny shorts and running shirt. He was dressed for the Boston Marathon, not a fun run.
When they called my name on the speakers, I had no clue what was going on. It wasn’t the first time I had heard my name over a PA system, though. I had been known to run off and hide among the clothes rack in Kmart. The round clothing racks were a particularly favorite place, and I’m convinced if we had one at my house, I would have dragged some sheets in the middle of it and slept there, protected among the hanging clothes.
This time, though, I wasn’t lost, so we wandered over to the information section (like my mom would do at Kmart when I disappeared…). They handed me a medal and told me I had won the race for my age group. The medal had the classic red and white ribbon threaded through the top. Two winged sandals were etched onto the medal, a symbol I didn’t understand, but thought was rather cool because I figured it highlighted my super speed. There was no doubt this medal would be my show-and-tell during the week, and I’d savor the look on Michael’s face as he studied the carpet, embarrassed by whatever stupid thing he brought in to show the class.
Running has been part of my life in various ways as I’ve grown up, it’s had different responsibilities in different phases of my life. While that fun run was the first experience I had actually running in a race, it wasn’t the first race I had seen. My older sisters recall early mornings piling into the station wagon and driving to some starting line in some town so my dad could run. Paul Simon was undoubtedly playing through the speakers, Graceland was a favorite (classic pump up music, right?). I was too young to really remember any of these race days, but they certainly set the tone for family expectations: if you could attend an event and support a family member, you did it. It didn’t have to be a sport, either — plays, musicals, concerts, or anything else, we tried to be there. Even now after the four kids have all grown up, that expectation still exists.
Those early days of my running life were similar to any kid with endless energy that loved sports. I had no idea what pain was; there’s an excellent chance I might have had four lungs and two hearts back in those days. The second race I participated in was a four miler. June, my older sister by six years, tagged along, too. She had never run, and showed no real interest in the activity (little did we know many years later she’d be running super fast, too). Dad stuck with June, a slow and steady pace that my body found boring, so I took off and zoomed to the finish line without a bother. I waited for them at the finish line alone.
Racing was fun! June didn’t agree on that particularly morning. I could have run another 4 miles without even thinking about it.
Then, a few years later, that beast called puberty arrived; suddenly, racing, and running in general, felt quite different. My four lungs became two and my two hearts became one (and not in a romantic way). My first growth spurt was out not up.
My parents emigrated from Ireland in the 1970s following their marriage and the birth of my two sisters. Summer trips to Ireland were a staple of my childhood — a month or so with my Granny Lally in County Mayo and then a one day cross-country drive to county Wicklow to see my dad’s side of the family.
One of my uncles opened a gas station in Mayo. This was a big deal the novelty of a new place in such a quiet part of the world was exhilarating. A new place to go that wasn’t a relative’s house or church! Our days in Ireland were spent outside, playing ball in our Granny’s yard, trying as hard as possible to not hit one of the two windows at the front of the house. When we did, we were banished to the back yard, which was, literally, a cow pasture on pitched land that would have been a hell of a sledding hill back in Massachusetts. Playing soccer, or even just running through the long grass at the back of the house was treacherous because of the massive piles of cow manure that we had to treat like land mines. But that gas station was a small escape, something new and different and exciting. What would make a gas station exciting (well, you’ve never summered in rural Ireland, huh…)? It was the food; more specifically it was the candy. This wasn’t just any candy, it was Irish candy. Candy that us “Yankee” cousins couldn’t find in America.
This candy cost me dearly, along with, probably, an unfortunate set of pubescent years….
Closing time was usually when we’d visit the gas station with our cousins or aunt. Typically, we were allowed one piece of candy when we’d visit. My first crush was a girl named Venessa, my second crush was a candy bar named, less glamorously, “Crunchie.” A Crunchie came in a golden wrapper, distinctive from all the other chocolate bars at the dance. Her name was scrawled, irresistibly, in bright red: impossible to ignore. This chocolate bar is simple: Cadbury chocolate (which is a drug, I believe) and some sort of honey filling (imagine some condensing the inside of ten Butterfingers into one candy bar….). The sticky honeycomb center would mine its way into to my molars, hardening as I chewed it. The bar would crunch (hence the name…) with every bite, and if I was feeling patient, I would carefully eat just the thin chocolate layer to expose the honeycomb middle. A seductive undressing, if you will.
When I was in 5th and 6th grade, I was allowed to work at my Uncle’s gas station. It was my first job, and I was rather proud of it. The station was on the only road in and out of a small town called Belmullet. While Belmullet was tiny, the station caught a lot of traffic. It was really the only place in town to buy gas, snacks, or have your car fixed-up for miles.
I would pump the gas and ring up folks in the store (I still have nightmares about running credit cards through that crazy carbon copy machine). I was the novelty item, the “Yankee” cousin visiting for the summer who talked funny. During my summer gas station attendant intern experience (no longer on my resume….), I was paid in candy and ice cream. No questions asked (I am sure there would have been questions, and severe stomach aches, if I was really taking advantage of this freedom.). Combining my daytime diet of Crunchie bars and various other chocolate or frozen treats with roughly 3,000 pounds of meat and potatoes at dinner, I started to look less like a fun run champ and more like a pee-wee football offensive lineman.
Those summers changed my perspective on running in an impactful way. I couldn’t go as fast or as far as my younger version. My peers grew faster, their heart pumping less chocolate and honeycomb and potatoes than mine.
Unfortunately, my relationship with running also needed to change at this point in my life. I played a lot of soccer and became serious about the game in middle school. I played club and town soccer. Two games on the weekend, and usually two practices during the week, meant a lot of running and training and chasing down opponents. Now, practice didn’t just mean scrimmaging and drills. By sixth and seventh grade, practices meant running and sprinting, too. We had to get in shape so we were prepared for those other teams that were doing the same thing.
Fun runs had turned to wind sprints. And first place medals had turned into hands knees and gasping for air, wondering what happened to my extra lungs.
Running was now team building, an orchestra of 18 boys sucking in air together, the coach’s whistle the only brass instrument.
For whatever reason, I could not keep up with the other boys. I was the slow kid on both my teams. My literacy for soccer was excellent, I watched and studied the game. My mind was ahead of my body, but I couldn’t make up the difference.
Our town soccer team had a coach who is on my personal Mount Rushmore of coaches. He was a small, energetic British man who just exuded enthusiasm. He blended fun with intensity. He would concoct gameplans for different opponents, especially the good ones, letting us in on his little tactical nuggets. He’d have code words to yell out to us on the field when we’d need to change our formation. The one that I still remember is, “Back to Earth.” We’d start the game in a 4-2-4 formation. Using four forwards was unheard of, but Coach convinced us it’s how we should start the game, just for those first 10 minutes. After ten minutes he’d yell, “Back to Earth” and we’d move to a more traditional 4-4-2 formation.
I loved playing for him. We won a bunch of games and qualified for the state tournament a few times, and he loved winning and he loved coaching us. However, he also loved torturing us.
Before the season would start, he would call the house of each player (no email yet…) and invite us up to his house for a bit of training. I recall one March session in a field of snow. A large pasture filled with boys laughing and kicking a ball around, led by a boisterous English man who was having the most fun of all.
His house was up in this really hilly part of town, so naturally, the training session would include a good long run up and down the hills. To coach’s credit, he’d participate, too.
Like any team run, we’d start in a clump, chatting away, laughing out the nervous energy that came with this type of activity. Everyone judging, some making alliances that they’d stick together throughout the run. Of course, there is always the one clown on the team hyperventilating after 50 yards as a joke.
After a couple minutes it would grow quiet, the orchestra of breathing and footfalls taking over. Inevitably, the pack would stretch thinner, the fittest boys taking off from the pack, when in reality it was probably just everyone else was slowing down. Over the first mile or so, I would begin to slink towards the back breathing heavily and wishing I had never taken that job at the gas station and eaten all that chocolate. Soon enough, the hills and the loneliness really kicked in. There was no enjoyment in any of this, I didn’t have my dad to pull me along. This was not a fun run. This was torture, plain and simple. These are the moments when I’d decide to call the police to come and arrest my coach. He had to be stopped, but then I’d remember that this was all voluntary. Or at least, it was made to seem voluntary. I knew there was no way in hell my parents would let me skip something like this.
Next would come the most embarrassing part of any of these team runs. It’s the “Let’s go run with the slow kid” moment. This is when everyone else is done with the run, so to build team spirit they go back to collect the slow-poke and bring him home. This is a moment I experienced a lot because I was always slow, but I was also fortunate enough to be on multiple teams that would actually do this. Not every team is willing to do it, but I was grateful my teams did. It’s actually a great barometer for how close a team is and how strong the leadership is.
As the slow kid, none of those platitudes about team building are running through your head as you drag your ass to the finish line. You’re just confused why everyone else still has so much energy and all you want to do is collapse.
During those years, I began fearing practice because I worried we’d have to run. I hated running, so I wouldn’t want to do it in my free time in order to improve and make practices easier. It was a vicious cycle that really came to a head in the spring of 8th grade.
Yes, it came to a head.
Club soccer in 1998 wasn’t the money making machine it is today. It was a way for very good soccer players to play against each other. Similar to club soccer now, it was a big time commitment back then, too. My parents sacrificed a lot of their own time for my sake; my weekday practices were in Newton, about a 45 minute drive from home without traffic. We had winter practices, too. My dad and I would be out the door before sunrise, peering through frosted windows as the world slowly stirred, NPR’s Sunday morning programming making it tough not to drift off to sleep as the heat pumped through the vents. There was no phone for me to stare at, so I’d listen to the radio and try to wake up before running around in a bubble chasing a soccer ball for two hours.
So, to recap. I’ve put on some weight due to eating too much chocolate in Ireland. My lung capacity dropped and I was the slow kid with the quick mind on both my teams. Winning fun runs was a distant memory. Enjoying the act of running had completely disappeared. I hated it, and I pushed back against my dad any time he caught me on the couch watching TV instead of doing something to regain my former running prowess. We’d fight about it on a regular basis, actually. He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to go for a run; it was his way of escaping and clearing his mind and he thought it should be mine, too. When he traveled, his two questions at the hotel’s front desk were: Where is the nearest church? and are there any good running routes nearby? Religion and running intersected for my dad, both helped him recenter. Offering him quiet moments to regroup before returning to his busy life.
Running was not a quiet activity for me, it was full of panting and wheezing and pain. So I rarely did it on my own, which led to my dad deciding he was going to take control. He had wasted too much time driving me around to practices and games, watching me ride the bench or play poorly. The pre-game pep-talks were not working, so he changed course.
It was a Sunday afternoon in May; I remember because my club team was gearing up for a Memorial Day tournament on Long island. I was sitting in the back of the car following our game; our 5-0 loss, my clean uniform, and rested legs bothered my dad quite a bit. It was a long, silent ride. My mom in the passenger seat, all of us peering out a different window. When we pulled into the driveway my dad told me to stay in the car. My mom hopped out and my dad said we’d be home in a bit.
Confused, I asked what we were doing. My dad informed me that I didn’t get much exercise during the game, so we were going to go to the high school.
My stomach dropped.
He continued on and said that if we were going to dedicate Memorial Day weekend to a soccer tournament in Long Island, he sure as hell wasn’t going to watch me on the sideline. I had two weeks to get fit, or we weren’t going to the tournament.
The high school was dead on a Sunday, all sorts of space to run around and chase a soccer ball. We started by running, my dad joined me, just like the fun run years before. This wasn’t just punishment for me but it was my dad’s workout for the day. Following some laps, my dad sent me about 50 yards away from him. He’d punt a soccer ball up in the air. My job was to bring it down out of the air and then dribble in at full speed and shoot the ball into the net. If I missed the net, I chased the ball down and returned it to my dad.
Just like Herb Brooks and that scene in Miracle… we’d do it again… and again…
Now, this was in the spring. Soccer nets are tucked away at this time of year in favor of those stupid, triangular, teeny-tiny lacrosse nets. So my target for each shot was one-sixth the size of a soccer net, and my dad had picked the net in the middle of all the fields. Miss the net, and the ball is going to travel some distance before coming to a stop. Needless to say, I was doing quite a bit of chasing, which is exactly what my dad wanted.
The afternoon was capped off with some sprints, but not just any sprints. The high school has a popular sledding hill. So that’s where we went. This is the type of hill that injured sledders. It was long and steep, the grass was soft, still wet from spring rains. My dad and I sprinted to the top, jogged down, and did it again… and again… Legs and lungs burning.
In the car on the way home, my dad declared that we’d be doing that routine every day between now and Memorial Day, with next Sunday’s game acting as an assessment for the Memorial Day trip. Play well, we go. Play poorly (or ride the bench), and we’re not going.
My seventh grade mind tried to process my afternoon plans to identify some loopholes that might get me out of this mess. Did I have any big tests at school? Did I feel some sort of illness coming on? I reluctantly accepted the sentence from my dad, hoping that it might be an empty threat. My dad was a busy man, too.
Turns out he wasn’t too busy; we trained every night that week. I even tried a sneak attack, informing him one morning that I had karate after school. Without a beat he said to pack my cleats and he’d pick me up from karate.
Damn it.
We ended up going to Long Island, and I ended up playing great that weekend. I credit my dad for the tough love for two weeks, and I also credit my anger at the entire situation. I played mad that weekend, out to prove to my dad that I was good enough.
My relationship with running during those middle school and high school years was awful. It was a form of punishment and embarrassment. Fitness tests and Monday long runs in high school where I was routinely the caboose that had been disconnected from the other train cars. The term “wear your flats to practice” sent a shudder through me every week. It meant we were running instead of playing soccer.
Looking back, I have a couple regrets. I wish I had a different mindset towards running. But most importantly, I wish I had never succumbed to the siren song of the Crunchie.
It’s funny, I have memories of going for runs in college. First, it was a way to spend time with a girl I liked. We’d go for runs down Southbridge Street in Worcester, but I’d also enjoy the runs on my own along that dreary stretch of road, slowly but surely extending my distance, reaching farther and farther away from campus, and, just like those afternoons with my dad, my run culminated in a climb up College Street to return to the dorm. I can’t say how often I ran in college, probably a few times a week at most. My memories are of bad music playlists, grey sky, pot holes, puddles, and cars zooming by. But the runs became a bit of an escape for me. I wasn’t training for anything, except maybe the 100 weekly Busch Lights and endless buffalo chicken wraps from our campus go-to spot called Crossroads.
That experience of running throughout college is the beginning of my relationship with running now. I’m 36 years old and can’t imagine my days without a run, long or short. It’s become a way to explore new cities while traveling, wandering down streets or seeking out interesting landmarks, ending up in places I wouldn’t have by train, uber, or subway. It’s become a way to decompress after a long day, clearing my head or just forgetting about the nonsense for a while. Emails get drafted during those runs, stories come to mind, connections are made between ideas, and sometimes miles click by without a single thought at all — that wonderful runner’s high.
Before my dad passed away in 2014, my sister June, the one that struggled to finish 4 miles all those years before, ran her first marathon. We had both completed half-marathons but never the whole shebang. June and I planned to meet at the 21 mile mark so I could run in the last five miles with her, while dad waited at the finish line.
It was a grueling last five miles, our dad always said a marathon is only halfway done at the 20 mile mark. Your body is literally eating itself at that point, searching for any sort of energy to keep the body moving forward. June was cramping up and moving slowly, but she kept plugging away. At one point, she ended up on the wrong side of a metal barrier and had to climb over it, nearly seizing up completely and having to call it quits.
But dad was waiting at the finish line.
As we approached the final stretch, I peeled off so June could have the final moments to herself. I wasn’t crossing a marathon finish line until I earned it. She finished the marathon as our parents looked on.
It’s been half my lifetime since I played soccer day-in and day-out. The middle schooler inside of me is shocked every day when I lace up my sneakers to go for a run in the rain, snow, sub-zero cold, or blistering heat. What would the Crunchie eating version of me say if he caught a glimpse of me on the track during a speed workout or taking in the scenery and feeling grateful for the time to run and be outside? He’d probably think I’m nuts and then take another bite of his Crunchie.
I think of myself more like that first iteration of myself as a runner - the fun run kid. When I lace up my shoes, that’s the kid I try to channel. Even through the aches and pains are far worse now than they were in 1992.
Every time I head outside and go for a run, I’m bringing my dad with me, too. Sometimes he’s telling me to take it easy. Other times to speed up and chase a personal best.
The 28 years that have passed since I won that fun-run medal have combined to become their own form of long road race. The ups and downs, both on the roads and sidewalks of Boston and beyond, have been smooth in sections and challenging in others. Injuries and challenges and successes and stresses, all their own miles in this extended race. Some days I’m the slow kid in the back, huffing for air as others push me along, and other times I’m floating down the Charles River, sun shining, grateful for the moments when running feels like a drug.
This is why, as I ate those Crunchie bars and sat around the house, my dad would bicker with me about getting outside and going for a run. The short term goal was obvious to me, he wanted me fit for soccer and able to compete. But the long-term goal was to find something that would provide an escape for an hour a day. Something that would healthy in mind and body. It’s the same reason my mom would drag us out of bed on a Sunday morning for church. It’s the habits and the balancing of our lives because at certain points, those ballasts are vital for our well-being.
Five or six days a week, I’ll continue to step out on the street turn left on Main St. and run toward the river. My dad didn’t know a pandemic would come in 2020, but he knew everyone needs something to keep them calm and level-headed as the world swirls around us. The world has always done it, and the world will continue to do it. I’m glad I have running to help me both forget the world for a chunk of time during the day and then meet it head on when my sneakers are off.