The Distance

Last Year I hit the age when all the junk food that I ever consumed had come back to haunt me. My waistline started to expand. The worn down, folded over notch in my belt moved away from the buckle in a direction it shouldn't. Whenever I tried running, I could only go five . . . maybe six hundred feet before giving up.

This has got to change, I kept telling myself.

I told myself that for months. Then right after Thanksgiving I started to run almost everyday on the treadmill. I started out easy, but kept pushing myself harder every day, adjusting the speed, raising the incline, increasing time, all that. What made this attempt at exercise unique was that I didn't stop after a week or two. I kept going.

A couple of months later, for what must be explained by global warming, it stopped raining and an unprecedented series of beautiful days in February followed. I stopped using the treadmill (which was getting really boring by that point) and ran outside. I ran out to my old grade school, looped around through some neighborhoods that didn't exist when I was in grade school and kept running. It was kind of like this:



Well, not really. I didn't grow a beard.

Using online resources (Google maps) I calculated my route to be a distance of six miles. I ran this route at least three times every week.

Around Monday evening, March 24, I started thinking that it was about time to push myself again. I was already running six miles up and down hills on a regular basis. What more could I do to push myself? DOUBLE the distance. Make two laps around the same six mile route, without stopping.

I started to get really excited about this idea and decided to attempt it the next day, Tuesday, March 25. Tuesday morning came and I started to run. No sooner had I taken my first few loping steps than I felt the beginnings of rain. Not wanting to run in the rain I turned around and went back inside. I would run my twelve miles the next day. Fifteen minutes later, after I had gotten out of the shower, the sun was out, not a drop of rain around.

AAARRGGHH! The running barbarian yawped inside of me. Tomorrow no rain will stop me from running twelve miles.

The next morning it was cloudy, but it wasn't raining. I set out on my twelve miles. At about .1 miles I felt a few rain drops. At .3 miles I felt some heavier ones. But it would probably be like the day before and only last a few, maybe twenty minutes tops. At about 2 miles the rain hadn't stopped at all. The sky was getting darker. But I kept going. I ran out to the old grade school (3 miles), turned right and headed back for the next leg of the run. The rained continued the whole time. Trucks started spraying water behind them in their wake.

I completed my first lap. I was up the street from home and their was no sign of the rain going away. In fact it was getting colder, and wetter. I had a choice, complete my six mile run which I had done dozens of times already or finish what I set out to do that day, Wednesday, March 26. I turned back to start lap 2 and face the elements.

What I was also turning into was the the wind and the rain. I told myself that mere wind and rain only have power to make me go back if I actually do turn around and go back like I did the day before, and that was only a sprinkle. I was not going to give them that power this time. Not again. I kept on going. At about seven miles it got colder. The rain stung my eyes, my shirt was soaked through and it clung to chest. The wind blew into it.

I felt a war of heat wage, and the battlefield was my skin. On one side were the elements. The cold water and wind that struck me, and my wet shirt shirt magnified their potency. Defending against their onslaught was my metabolism, pushing them back by shear will alone.

As I ran past the school for the second time the battle had developed into a violent stalemate. At least, it felt that way. I imagined the children in the classrooms where I sat many years ago. One of the kids would be staring out the window, like I would have been doing on such a day, and see a figure in the rain. The teacher would tell the young student to pay attention, but would notice what he was looking at: me, running, through the rain, soaked through like a sponge. You should never run like that through the rain she would say to the impressionable young minds around her. You could get sick.

A half a mile later I was trying to think of strategies against the wetness. I could take my shirt off. No, the world was not yet ready to see me shirtless. I looked over my shoulder. Just as I suspected the back side of my shirt was mostly dry. While trying not to break pace I pulled my arms in through my sleeves and rotated the shirt around. It didn't want to turn it was so wet. But I turned my shirt around anyway so that the mostly dry back side was now in front. It did provide some protection against the wetness. The battle had subsided for the moment.

But it now felt weird to run with my shirt on backwards. What did I look like to the drivers in the cars going by? Did they think, what an idiot for running out in the rain like this, and look he has his shirt on backwards, what a retard!? Did they even notice my shirt was on backwards? Or were they chearing me on like a chorus in my own Greek tragedy?

I had about two miles left. The sky was dark as ever. Both sides of shirt were now equally soaked, and it was still on backwards. The rain kept coming hard like it was nobody's business to slow it down. But then a few drops did slow down. They meandered as they fell while the other rain drops rushed by. Could it be? No, it couldn't. It was almost April and the time for snow in these parts had been over for a while. .2 miles later I passed by a couple of teenage girls walking their dogs. They were laughing (at me?).

"It's snowing!" one of them shouted.

I still wouldn't believe it. I looked down at my wet self. And there I saw them, unmistakable, clinging to my waist, were snowflakes. There were snowflakes on me as I ran the rest of the way.

I made it back home. I completed the twelve mile run. I had done something I had never done before, set a new standard for my physical limits. I didn't feel any satisfaction just then, however. As soon as I went through the door I peeled my shirt off. It didn't want to go, like it was a squatter taking up residence on me. Once the shirt was off I looked down at myself. My whole torso was a splotchy red. Then, I took a bath.

That afternoon I was a bit worried that my personal victory might get me pneumonia. I ate a lot of hot food, kept myself dry, and paid close attention to if I ever started to cough, or feel a sore throat or feverish, or the chills, or anything like that. I waited for the symptoms to come. Nothing showed up that day, or the next. Now a few days later I still haven't felt any adverse effects, no scars to remind me of my duel with the elements.