A Challenge Accepted
Before leaving for the States uber set me a challenge: run 5K in each city I visit. I despise running, preferring swimming or cycling for my endurance challenges, but being away for a month without access to a pool or my bike was going to present a problem for my fitness situation. So even though I will go to some lengths to avoid running, I packed my running shoes, sourced a lightweight and compact set of clothes for running, and took up uber’s challenge. The idea of coming to view the cities as playgrounds as I cavorted happily through one city after another was alluring.
The reality was very nearly that good.
I was totally going to cross that last bridge until I got there and saw it was closed for construction.
I had to draw the line at cities I didn’t sleep in. Denver and Providence, for example, did not see a 5K run simply because I only spent the day there. Carrying running gear seemed absurd, and taking two hours out of an already short day seemed like a bad plan. The rest, I did. In the cold, in the rain, in the disconcerting sun. Up and down hills that would have daunted me had I been faced with walking them. Through slightly scary backwoods areas. Backtracked by construction. Once I realized there was no physical reason I couldn’t run those 5K in every city there was no way I wasn’t going to do it. Even if it meant hauling my sorry ass out of bed at 5:30 after a night of happy and decadent socializing.
If I could teleport to Seattle every day just for my run, I’d do a lot more running.
The good? Exercise is fantastic. You do a lot of sitting around when you travel, and that takes a toll, physically and psychologically. Getting moving offsets all that sloth and makes it a lot easier to take. It eats stress, so when you find yourself in rush hour traffic on the opposite side of Denver from where the airport is and only an hour and a half until taxi for the last flight out, it’s a lot easier to maintain your sangfroid. Planning runs makes other things slot into place better. “I have to be at the airport at 8:00, means I leave at 7:20, means I have to be back from my run by 7, means I’m out of bed for 6…” Believe it or not it helped with timing. And it did give me an exquisite view of the places I visited. When the point of the activity is less a place and more of a “I need to run for this distance, it doesn’t matter what streets I cover to do it,” things reveal themselves in delightful ways. I saw parts of many cities I would not have seen otherwise.
Sneaking out of my mother’s flat to run in Beaufort felt a lot like being a teenager again.
The bad? Running shoes take up space in your luggage that sometimes you wish you could devote to something else. Then there’s the sneaky allure of that feeling of virtuousness, which tends to lull you into a false sense of security when it comes to food: “I ran 5K today, that means I can have all the croissants.” Actually that run is worth about half a Voodoo Doughnut. If all you’re looking to get out of this is permission to eat more, proceed with caution. Also if you aren’t careful you’ll eventually wreck your knees. Most of this is solved by having a suitably sized carryon, not losing the run of yourself (haha) when going out for dinner, and being mindful of what you’re doing while you’re running.
I could see the Hollywood sign from this run, and smell the jasmine.
There is, however, something truly glorious about all this. The fact that I can get up and run that far without stopping is no small piece of knowledge. Yes, I’ll tend to run it slowly. But I can run it. True, given a span of time to run in I will not get as far as a proper runner would, but I can run for that whole span of time. I just have to decide to do it.
Calgary tried to kill me, first with cold, then with blocking my planned route, then again with cold.
This knowlege was crucial when Boston and I finally met, briefly but spectacularly.
Maps are screencapped from my Runkeeper logs.
I think I have had the exact same set of impressions: I love the feeling of getting a serious thing done each morning: I feel stiff, tired and slightly broken if I don’t get a run in and spend the day sitting and I still struggle with the license effect, though it’s been helpful to invert it (‘you can’t eat f you don’t at least run’, and ‘you need to get some sleep if you’re going to run’).
The only thing I would add is how much I love learning about the places between places. I was really struck by this in Oregon, where I have been places that are pretty much only seen through a car window, or by joggers.
I’m also glad that the 5K Challenge was such an enormous success. You should be really proud.