effortlessly

In late January I began to do regular speed workouts: hill repeats, intervals, and tempo runs. Each of these workouts is more or less a crisis, beginning with the question of why am I doing this to myself, which then leads to the questions of what do I really want, and why do I think that what I want is to run faster. The work of running faster is tiring, and it sometimes hurts, and for what?

Once upon a time I was effortlessly fast, and now I put in quite a lot of effort to run not so fast. I’m running as many miles per week these days as I did at the peak of training for my first marathon more than twenty years ago, and I can’t really say why. I suppose I could say I’m running this much because I’m following the training plan I began a couple months ago in order to get ready for a half marathon right after my birthday, when I enter a new age group, and I just want to see how fast I can go at my favorite distance. But why?

True, during a good run, I feel vividly alive—especially now, as the days are getting longer, warmer, and more colorful. But this desire to feel alive is bound up with its opposite. Aren’t I also trying to run away from old age, or somehow to run away from getting slower? It’s too late; I’m already getting slower.

My time, like everyone else’s, is limited. What’s different for me now is that I perceive its limits more clearly. In Saving Time, Jenny Odell suggests “experimenting with what looks like mediocrity in some parts of your life. Then you might have a moment to wonder why and to whom it seems mediocre.” I’ve been considering this idea as I weigh the opportunity cost of running (these days) six days each week. Is spending all this time pounding the pavement in pursuit of faster races just a way to avoid dealing with what I really really want—which is to be writing?

In its own way, writing is as pointless as running, though unlike running, it creates something that can be shared. Lately I’ve been listening to Laura Veirs quite a lot, and her sweet and melancholy song “Make Something Good” has gotten me wondering about the longing to make art. Why put all this effort into making something good? It is just to have something to share?

Out running around and around the park and city this month, I see the desire to make something good blooming everywhere. Do the flowers feel longing as I feel longing to make something as extravagant as the magnolia, intoxicating as the lilac? Do the blooming trees feel disappointed, as I do, when their petals fall to the ground, turn brown, crumble underfoot or blow away?

A few years ago, I did my best to make something good of a very bad time, which resulted in something I can now share: my chapbook Only Provisional, available today from Ethel. I am so happy to have had my little book published by Ethel; Sara Lefsyk makes such beautiful chapbooks and zines. Do check it all out!