It’s not until mile five that I get that flying feeling. That smooth floating feeling. My legs start to feel new again, and stronger, and I feel really fast running past the houses in my neighborhood. But that’s not until mile five.
Miles one, two, three, and four are a painful trudge. Leaden shins and ankles, aching calves. Shoes too tight at the toe, too loose around the ankle. Every breath feels like a thick scrape in my throat.
The early 20th century British poet Charles Hamilton Sorley writes about running in his poem “The Song of the Ungirt Runners.” The speaker describes an oncoming storm which “strips the trees” and makes the sea’s “[waves howl] to the skies.” And yet, despite the oncoming storm, or the oncoming threat of war and devastation, the speaker declares over and over again “We run because we must . . . we run without a cause . . . and we run because we like it / Through the broad bright land.” The poem forces you to cope with the brutality of running. Running is joy and hope, in the face of pain and fear. The poem was written shortly before Sorley’s death at the age of 20 in the first World War.
Here’s how I learned to love running (all of it, even the sweatiness, the stinkiness, the red-facedness): I kept doing it. I run every day. Some days I last 20 minutes, other days a few hours. Honestly, I am still learning to love it. Some days, I trudge back home, defeated. But on the days when I can spend a whole day going farther and farther, I feel irresistibly strong. It’s a feeling that radiates in my whole body. If I could distill freedom into a single emotion, that would be it for me. Even the hard thumpings of my heart and my feet on trails and pavement feel like a chant; I am free, I am free, I am free.
When Ahmaud Arbery was murdered, I thought of that– of freedom. Running wasn’t political before that moment, but freedom has always been. His killing was an act of poison, of senseless violence, of terrorism, of racism. While my feet stamped out the notes to what I call freedom, did his become the harsh, jagged movements of survival? I am horrified by this sacrilege. I am horrified by the violent taking of human life, of human freedom. A runner– that’s something all of us know about him. He ran because he liked it, “through the broad, bright land.”
Running taught me not to fear myself. It forced me to confine myself to my body and then to release myself from it, to simultaneously be myself and forget myself. It makes me feel like a bird far, far from the ground, but safely tucked in the wind. And because my body is not always political, I will never have to fear being shot down mid-flight. I want to write about Ahmaud Arbery because I want to remember him. He was murdered in the midst of an activity so commonplace and yet, to me, so sacred. I don’t want to run passively anymore; I don’t want to run just for exercise, or just for fun. I want to dedicate my freedom to something better. My running, which is really an act of my privilege, needs to be an act of remembrance.
The Lebanese poet Zeina Hashem Beck has a poem called “Dismantling Grief”. In it, the speaker describes the pain of grief, and loss, saying that “Like a matchstick you will break, burn.” After having relived the trauma of pain, violence, war, and death, the speaker sips coffee on the balcony and ends the poem with the words: “This is a good day / to run. Your shoes are in the closet. Get them.”
This past summer I took two months off from running due to a minor stress fracture in my hip (yes, from running). Then, finally, I put my shoes on and I wheezed and crawled my way up the trail. It almost made me laugh; here I was, trudging. It had only taken a matter of weeks to humble me again. No flying feeling today, I thought. My shins felt more and more pinched as I went on. At the top of the hill I stopped to catch my breath. The air was already hot with the dryness of the summer morning, and it buzzed. I was alone, but my heart beat hard enough in my ears and chest to make me feel that I stood among a crowd.
My survival did not depend on that next step forward. And yet, I took a deep, painful breath and kept going.
Your shoes are in the closet. Get them.
Nicely said. Running as remembrance: I like that too. Remembering Charles Sorely as well.
Tears are flowing, well said.
I love this description of running. I have found it very cathartic recently, it feels like working through something, letting go. Or at least working through something. I hate that it has to be a privilege. Anyone should be able to go use their own two feet without fearing for their life. You’d think we would have at least that. Even those simple joys, the ones I get to have without worry, are dangerous for Black people.