Frame for Life
Some ramblings on running and my various personal problems
I’ve learned to accept and embrace that running—and nothing sexy or romantic or unusual—is the frame for my life. I run, so I wake up earlier. I lift weights. I make sure to hit a certain minimum of protein and carbs. I try to get more and better sleep. I wear sunscreen. I stretch. Between all this, other, more troublesome areas come into relief. Maybe, on my way to better sleep, I read a novel rather than Instagram. I don’t spend money randomly and stupidly so that I can afford a gym membership, coaching, larger quantities of food, triple magnesium. On an easy run, to make sure I’m keeping it low on the bizarrely delineated Borg scale, maybe I’ll call my mom or one of my sisters—I’m usually bad at talking on the phone; I struggle to do two things on two different planes of existence at once, so I have to be completely focused on someone when I speak to them to avoid drifting off completely. This, I have learned, makes me a (typically) very attentive friend but a somewhat frustrating partner (variables here are degree of intimacy, duration of time spent together). But running works—it’s like my other favorite activity: lying in bed and staring at the wall: peaceful, reassuring, rich with mind, gets easier the more dedicated I become.
There are too many running clichés. It’s easy to breathlessly proclaim its benefits, to speak of the wind rushing and the freedoms thus bestowed. In New York, a certain kind of run club, made of this era’s yuppies, has spread like a rash. A lot of these people are on Tik Tok, making videos about the physical and mental benefits of the activity; preaching low heart-rate training; showing off the latest shoes, short shorts and hydration vests. I get it. I also love my little shorts and telling people about them. The normies now have a way to live. Before, a career was meant to shape them. Now, those are barely on offer; it’s just jobs. Maybe a long-term relationship would be the organizing principle—but apps have intensified the stresses and disappointments of dating for a population raised to avoid, or outmaneuver, most forms of confrontation and rejection. Instead, independence reigns. You don’t need to fall in love with somebody who could ultimately ruin your life with an avoidant attachment style. Upgrade your mind, your body, your VO2 Max—you’ll fall in love with your self.
So there are a lot of reasons to not be a member of this club. If I didn’t have student debt and expensive taste I would probably be a working artist. I would run in secret. I would throw my phone in the trash and exclusively rely on other people to initiate. But my circumstances have made me a little uptight. I like the order. I love when I have a goal and then I go to someone more talented than me and they tell me how to reach it. I love being the student, even if it costs me a hundred thousand dollars. But it’s strange, other people ask me how to do things all the time. Or they present a problem, a troublesome area, and I cannot help but say “Have you tried this?” I have a lot of ideas. Many of them are good ones. My mom still brings it up: When I was a child, I would always reply, to every instruction or piece of advice, “I know.” I complain about never having had a mentor, about no one taking a sustained interest in guiding me through the muck of my weird little life, but I know what I project. I know.
It would be smooth, and artistically embarrassing, to conclude that running is my mentor. It isn’t. (For the sake of the art, thank god.) It has nothing to tell me. I already know. But even knowing, I struggle. I think of quitting every race I’m in while I’m in it. I whine to two men on the infield during a track 5000m, asking how many laps are left. The one race I do quit, a hilly half marathon in northern California, I do so about 70% of the way through, outside of the COVID contagion window, but not the recovery one. I think about my body; would I hurt myself forever if I fucking finish this? And manically, boringly: Could I still PR? Earlier, in a suddenly desperate mile 7, I glue myself to two upbeat sisters. I mention my suffering and one of the girls says she wouldn’t have been able to tell, I look smooth. The wall, not the running cliché but the one in my bedroom—it’s a dissociation thing. The more I get outside of myself the more I might be able to see what other people are looking at.