an interlude

Last time I wrote that next time I would write about my origins as a reader of romance novels, but today’s my birthday and I want to write about something else, which is in part the astonishing rapidity with which spring unfolds—only six weeks ago the leaves were just a pale green mist, and now look!—and in part some observations on trends.

I can get so anxious during spring. My grasping mind wants to hold on to each moment just a little longer than a moment can possibly last, which of course cannot be done, and eventually May 14 comes again, and another year of my life has passed, and the daffodils are long gone, the lilacs fading, the bluebell wood in full bloom.

I can’t get to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden often enough in spring. One visit each week starting in mid-March would be optimal but isn’t really manageable, especially given that I avoid the garden on the weekends, particularly when the cherry trees are in full bloom. I don’t like being at the garden with masses of other people.

I was thinking about crowds last Friday morning when I walked through the garden en route to the approximate start of the Brooklyn Half Marathon at the corner of Washington Avenue and Eastern Parkway, where I wanted to start my last long run before the race, which is this coming Saturday. The morning was chilly and rainy, so very few people were at the garden, and I could linger with the bluebells mostly by myself. I was thinking about crowds because I had the upcoming race in mind, a massive event that includes about 25,000 participants.

Road races didn’t used to be so big. For example, my last pre-kid Brooklyn Half, in April 2007, had 4,853 finishers—compared with 25,418 finishers in May 2023. Just signing up for New York Road Runners (NYRR) races is itself a race these days; whereas I used to be able to sign up for just about any NYRR race on a whim, right now almost every race on their 2024 race calendar is already sold out or near capacity. Because from 2008 through 2021 I participated in so few races (including exactly zero races from 2008 through 2014, the years when I was pregnant and/or had one or two children 3yo or younger), I have very little sense of how much the popularity of road running increased gradually versus all at once, due to the pandemic.

Increased participation in road running due to Covid-19 has been documented, and I’m part of that trend. After I had children and until 2020, I was rarely able to get out for a run more than once or twice per week, and I raced only four times. And then during the terrible year and a half when my kids were doing school at home, I got out for runs much, much more often. It was the best way to get away from the whole situation and have some time for myself under the sky, at least for a little while. I didn’t take part in the trend because it was trendy; running more often and longer just made sense to me at the time. In fact, I had no idea that running had become trendy until sometime after I started racing regularly again, in 2022. Before then, I didn’t really have any idea what anyone else was doing.

Who can say how much a trend—whether it is running or reading romance novels, or whatever—has to do with people seeing what other people are doing, and then doing the same themselves, and how much it has to do with lots of people happening to have the same good idea at the same time. Going to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in the spring is a wonderful idea—of course there will be lots of people there on the weekends! And running is of course fantastic! Very little else in the world feels as good as a good run! Though if you don’t like running, I get that, too. I just might be having a long argument with myself about the so-called pleasures of running while I head down Ocean Parkway toward the boardwalk this coming Saturday morning.