My First Run Back - Today I Asked Myself By Tess Bates

Today I asked myself about my first run back…

It has been 9 months since I’ve worked out.

Not just worked out here and there. Or gone on a run. 9 months since I’ve worked out at all, period.

Last fall (2020), I committed myself to a pretty rigorous running routine to get in shape for my first half-marathon ever. About three-quarters of the way through training, I received an email informing me that the race had been canceled due to the rising COVID cases in the country. “As a consolation,” it said, “my registration would be automatically deferred to next year’s half-marathon“—exactly 13 months away.

The day I read the email is the last day I ran. Or worked out. At all. For 9, whole months.

Until today, that is.

The deadline for getting back into shape has started to loom a little too close to ignore anymore. I’ve been dreading this day, dreading my first run back—knowing full good and well it will come as a shock to my dormant system.

So I decide to run a route I’m familiar with— the same trail I’ve been intermittently running for about six years now. We’re at my in-law’s lake place for the weekend, and one of my former favorite things to do here is to run through the scenic lake backroads leading up to their cabin.

It is obvious after only a few paces in that I am out of shape. I crank up my music hoping the angry females I’m listening to can block out the sound of my own, desperate panting. The inertia of every step I take ripples up through the soft spots of my body, and I am suddenly very aware of my thighs, my ass, my tummy, my arms. I wince because I feel like such a mom, so thirty, such an imposter in my Under Armor.

But then again, it’s not like I hate my body when it’s softer or dislike the curves and volume of my figure. At 31, I know better than to subscribe to the diluted assumption that only “hard bodies” are “in-shape bodies.” However, it’s true that I’ve lost most of the running muscles I trained so hard to build last year, which makes each step I take today a little less stable and a little more susceptible to the physics of pounding the pavement. At least right now, I’m my husband’s favorite version of me—supple and ample— but while that may score me mileage in the bedroom, those miles don’t translate out here, where it’s just me versus this run, dying before I’m even a hundred paces in.

With every step, I feel the familiar ache from the ankle I broke almost a decade ago and the corresponding pain in my opposite knee— an angry, stabbing punishment for having to compensate for all of the road shock that the flimsy, metal plate in my leg is unwilling to absorb. As my feet slam into the ground, I make a mental note that maybe I should add that extra scoop of collegian into my coffee…for my joints.

The notion of rusty joints makes me think of the packs of Cross Country high school girls who run around my neighborhood before school in the mornings, all lean and clad in their svelte little Nike Pro outfits. They look like a herd of bounding gazelles, with their long, graceful strides, gone around the block before I can even slide on both my Crocs to take the trash out. Once upon a time fifteen years ago, I was one of those girls, and yet here I am now, with my short, choppy strides, limping and inching my way up this slope.

But then, by the grace of the running gods, I enter about three-quarters of a mile downhill. My pace begins to even out, and I feel a distant glimmer of the athlete I used to be. A car passes, and I wonder if they’re thinking, “Wow, look at that runner!” “Maybe,” I tell myself, “I just had to burn off some old fuel before this machine could run efficiently.”

And just when I begin likening myself to images of thoroughbred horses, I reach the halfway point—1.5 miles— and I turn around to face the entire back half of my run, uphill.

Then, to twist the knife, the hot summer sun blazes out from behind the mid-morning clouds just to drive home the point that this is June. In Texas. You dumb, dumb runner. My whole body is subsequently reduced to a puddle: I have elbow sweat, ass sweat, boob sweat, arm sweat, even my eyelids are sweating as my hair starts to frizz out from beneath my ball cap in protest of the humidity. The hot air is so thick and unattainable, breathing feels like I’m trying to draw in dirt-flavored milkshake through my nostrils.

I drive my knees through the steepest grade of the hill, but you can measure my tiny, bobbling baby steps in inches. I imagine my Apple Watch is just a big question mark, shrugging its shoulders at the data, unable to interpret a heart rate this high without any forward motion as a run.

Another car passes me as I’m huffing my bedraggled ass up the hill. I glance up only to say with my desperate stare, “MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!!!”

I crest the hill (finally), and my quads and calves are screaming in protest. “We are 31, NOT 21!” they yell, “THIS IS RUDE!”.

Sweat is trickling down my face and dripping off my chin now, but unlike the sexy, neon beads that drip off the athletes in the Gatorade commercial, I’m dripping beads of Rose, Chardonnay, IPA—every round I drank around the fireplace last night comes seeping through my pores, just to drive home the point that I’m a gluttonous piece of shit.

As I inch onward, I think about how my brother-in-law (a helicopter flight RN) always cautions me that the majority of snakebite victims he responds to are usually unassuming runners on remote stretches of road—strong advice I take straight to heart, but that also sends me diving into traffic every time I see so much as a brown, squiggly stick in my path.

Right now, I’m willing a snake to pop out and put me out of my misery PLEASE because at the least that would be a valid excuse to stop running. The only wildlife I spot, however, are the skittish little lizards darting away from my heavy feet as I stomp down the asphalt, their short bursts of speed into the tall grass reminding me that right now, I can’t even outrun a lizard.

All this self-induced misery makes me so mad at myself for ever falling this far out of shape. I think back to the night—after 2 glasses of wine and pizza—that my sister-in-law and I tipsily cheers’d and decided it would be fun to sign up for a half-marathon. From my current state of misery, I can’t understand what the hell we must have been thinking.

I’m momentarily glad I can’t hear the sounds I’m making over my music. Forget the thoroughbred—I must sound like livestock by now.

Half a mile still left to go, and I have to call on the raw grit I usually reserve for childbirth to keep from stopping and walking. It’s forcing me to dig deep into my reserves, wherein I find my stubborn pride, all my repressed potential from high school sports (put me in, Coach!), and my rage—a combination of determination that is usually a recipe for collapsing on every proverbial finish line I attempt to cross.

Today, I might actually collapse and throw up on the finish line.

But eventaully, I cross it —3 miles—gasping, whimpering, slobbering, and utterly dragging ass.

My pulse is pounding so hard I think it might explode out of my skin.

My whole being is reduced down to one single, screaming mantra, “Water!!! I need Water!!“

I find my way into the lakehouse, marveling at the modern miracle that is AC, groping my way to the fridge, and elbowing past my 6 and 3-year-olds, who upon seeing me, immediately begin asking for things.

I utter the only words my mouth is capable of forming, “GO FIND DAD,” because I’m not the “facilitator of needs” right now. And I physically cannot make it one more step.

Then I hear him bound up behind me and ask, “Hey! How was your run?!” in a drawl so chipper it makes me want to knock it all the way back to West Texas.

I summon all the energy I can to glare and gesture at the kids, indicating he needs to do something about the needy spawn he coconspired to bring into this world.

My legs begin to give and I slump down next to the vent on the floor, sending up a silent prayer that maybe if I lay here long enough my body will return to a somewhat normal state.

I lift my arm, only far enough to glance up and ensure the exercise ring on my watch is closed, dammit, and drop it back to the floor in vindication, as I commence to dwell in deep regret over my run and every choice I’ve ever made that has contributed to this fresh hell.

The next two days, I’m so sore I can hardly move. Literally my whole body goes on strike.

But I remind myself, the hardest run is always the first run back—and it is behind me.

Until tomorrow,

Tess

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