*Side note: When I started this blog a year and a half ago, the purpose was to tell the story of how Lucy and I started running, which is why those posts refer to past events, etc. Read the chronological story from the beginning if you're interested and have a spare day or two.
Back when all those events occurred, I had absolutely NO intention of running with others. My running was about tiring Lucy out in as efficient a way as possible with the added benefit of me getting healthier. It was something I wanted as few people to see me doing as possible. I ducked my head as cars passed by. I was the typical New Yorker who didn't make eye contact if anyone passed me on the sidewalk, dragging my dog behind me.
But then I moved to Seattle. And I convinced myself to run my first half marathon. I saw people with running friends (many of them purple-shirted) and, after a year and a half of solo+dog running, I felt a twinge of desire for my own running friends. It was another 6 months before the TNT flyer came in the mail and I decided to go to the info meeting, where I was immediately convinced to fork over my registration fee and sign on the dotted line.
I was terrified to go to the first team practice. It had been just Lucy and me for so long, and we had our pace and our routes and our rhythm. And now, I had to leave Lucy behind and go run with people. As a person who hadn't quite broken out of her shell completely yet and grown into her Seattle shyness-free skin, this was unbelievably intimidating.
I quickly learned, though, that running with others makes running better. Especially when you have to run really far. Running with friends is fun, carefree, and easier. I began looking forward to our long Saturday runs and Tuesday workouts.
But I still relished my solo runs with Lucy. Running was my internal therapy. As I ran, I stomped out all the frustration, pounded the worries into the pavement, and let the stress slide down my spine and onto the sidewalk behind me. I thought I had to be alone with music blaring in my earbuds for all this to happen.
After that first TNT season, I missed my running friends but was happy to get back to just me and Lucy running. I was happy to use running as my selfish time to think about me and only me (and Lucy, who is a part of me). But after a while, I started getting that twinge again. The desire to run with people.
By the time I signed up for my second TNT season, Seattle had done it's job of splitting my shyness shell wide open so that I could step out into the world unencumbered for the first time. Now I was really starting to like being a social runner. I had Saturday and Tuesday practices, but I also began scheduling runs with my new-found running friends outside of these practices. On a random Wednesday, Thursday, or Sunday, I'd meet up with others to run (this was, in fact, the beginning of Erica and I's running partnership).
In that second season, and in the third, as I trained for marathons 2 and 3, I grew to love social running, but still wanted at least one day a week with just Lucy and me. One day to collect my thoughts and run alone. I was sad if I overbooked my social exercise schedule and didn't get some just-me-and-Lucy time in.
Even just this past fall, as I was training for Goofy in TNT season #4, I still enjoyed a solo run once a week or so. But then Lucy began fully embracing her middle age, and her energy levels began showing it. As my speed was increasing, her desire to get out and run was diminishing. Until finally I realized that I needed to delegate runs with Lucy to slow, short recovery days or simply no runs at all.
Then suddenly, as Lucy started fading from my running life, my desire to run with other people increased tremendously. And now, here I am at the point where Lucy gets her 30 minutes of walking exercise every morning and leaves me lonesome for my post-work runs. While this is a huge and bittersweet turning point in life with Lucy (that I'm simply not going to expound upon in this post), it has opened up my schedule to run with others.
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| On a positive note, to distract from this minor Lucy sadness, we sniffed out some signs of spring on our walk this morning! |
Regardless of the reasons, I have transformed into a whole-heartedly social runner. So far this week, I ran with Team on Saturday, a recovery run with Lucy on Sunday (the first run with her in weeks and only because Erica decided she wanted to run longer than my recovery length), another team run Tuesday, a much needed gossip-filled run with Erica on Wednesday, and tonight I ran with Ironman/Coach Jason, Ironman/Coach Joe, and another teammate Alana. In fact, tonight I found myself with multiple options of groups of friends to run with (the group I ran with, the boys from Team, or my teacher running clubbers), which amazes me slightly. How have I become so spoiled with running friends when just 4 years ago I was pining away for simply one? The thought that I'm going to need to run solo on Saturday morning before heading out to coach my first elementary school track meet has me a little sad. 60 minutes on my own? It just doesn't seem right anymore.
But I'll make it through those measly 60 minutes, and then I'll get up early Sunday morning to meet up with a multitude of runner friends and run the St. Patty's Day Dash. Can't wait to run with you all.
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