Running, My Constant

By Barbara Zirl

I didn’t always know I was a runner, or that I need to run like I need to breathe.

I was a nonathletic, shy kid who read and concentrated on academics. I never paid much attention to sports and growing up in the 1970’s, girls weren’t encouraged to go out for the track team or play ball. The only sport I did – with my family – was skiing. My dad was from Europe and skied on iconic mountains in Austria. He took us to Vermont and my brother and I learned to ski there. It wasn’t until college at George Washington University, when my roommate, an enviably lanky, athletic girl suggested I join her for a run, that I first got a taste of it. We lived close by the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and I was soon running along the monuments in my spare time from studying, exploring our nation’s capital on foot. When I graduated, I returned to my northeast New Jersey home, got a job in New York City and ran for exercise and as a stress-reliever from my hectic New York/New Jersey commuting lifestyle. In New York, companies participated in corporate challenge events and I ran several 5Ks in the city. But otherwise, I didn’t seek out competitive running activities. Running for me then was still a way to stay in shape in between ski seasons. I was more serious about skiing than I was about running.

Then something changed. In the mid-1980’s, my father became terminally ill and our home was a hospice with a revolving door of visiting nurses and caregivers who slept on the couch in our den and didn’t even talk to me. All I wanted to do was: Get. Out. Of. The. House. I laced up my trusty Nike Pegasus with their purple swoosh and ran. I changed jobs twice and I kept running. My dad died in 1990. I ran to ease the pain of grief. It wasn’t enough. I delved into work non-stop, traveled to other cities, commuted back and forth from New Jersey to New York, extending the work day at each end until there was no time to run. I got fat, out of shape, tired. I finally quit that job because I was sick of being tired all the time and hated being fat and just needed to move my body and soul. The first thing I did the very next day was go out for a run – my reassuring old friend. I never really left you.

That first step was a comfort. I ran in celebration, relieved to be freed from a cyclical corporate rat race. I increased my mileage, stayed at it, lost weight, saw that I had endurance and could run longer and enjoy it. One day, I caught up to another runner who frequented the same route I did and discovered we ran at the same pace. I’d bump into this girl regularly and we started running together. She told me she was training for a marathon. What’s a marathon, I asked.

The next year, we signed up for a marathon we could do together: The Marine Corps Marathon, back in my old college stomping ground. I started training. Now, running gave me focus and goals and a physical activity I could do and something in my life I could control. A month or so before the marathon, 9/11 happened. The twin towers fell. The Pentagon was attacked. When I couldn’t watch the news anymore, I ran to stop the noise.

I finished that first marathon and immediately put another race on my calendar. Another goal, propelling me forward. Each subsequent race taught me something new: how to train differently to achieve another running goal, a new PR, a Boston qualifying time, a more challenging course. Another marathon, and another and another - 29 marathons so far.

When I wasn’t training for a race, I still ran because I had to. Running became my constant. It grounded me, while it freed me. It was part of me now and I couldn’t be without it. Time and time again, running saved me. In the worst of times, I could go for a run and for an hour or two, listen to some music and be separated from the world and the problems in it and my pain and suffering. My mom had cancer twice: in 2008 and 2013. I took care of her and running took care of me. I saw her through rough chemo treatments, recovery, and remission and running held me up. My mom was my biggest fan and spectator, traveling with me to races and standing at finish lines.

With some 38 years of running under my feet, people around me accepted that I was a runner - a long-distance runner. They understood what it meant and stopped asking how long a marathon is. I had fans. Strangers would approach me in the grocery store to say they saw me running by their house or to ask what race I was doing next or to kid me and ask, how come you’re not running? Other runners would nod when our eyes met crossing paths on the roads.

If you’re a runner too, you know exactly what I mean. As runners, we speak a common language - even if the accent is a little different. Maybe you’re Lawrence Cherona sprinting to the finish line and edging out Lelisa Desisa by one second to win the Boston Marathon in 2:07.59; or you’ve just completed a 100 mile ultra race; or you’re pushing yourself out the door at 5:00 am to get in 5 miles before work gets in the way or to get your children off to school – when you nod at each other while you’re running on the road or trail, you know each other. You know that person got up at dawn to get ready to run like you did. Picked out their t-shirt, those compression socks, thought about which pair of running shoes to wear, took in some nutrition, started their Garmin. You speak the language of running. It courses through you like your blood. It’s part of you now. It’s not singular, though it’s personal. Running is a “we.” Whether I want camaraderie, solitude, a challenge, a race, an old path or a new road, running puts out a hand and says, c’mon, I’ve got you.

Just over a year ago, my mother’s cancer recurred and I watched her gradual decline over two months until she died. I didn’t run at all while she was hospitalized. I was a caged cheetah longing to escape and sprint through the tall grass. I didn’t know if I still could run, but I needed to. I put on my running shoes – Brook’s now - and took that first step, at home on the pavement.

More than anything else, running defines me now. It’s who I am. Running is the constant and I’m the variable. Life changes and priorities shift as I get older. Maybe I’m more or less fit now, not trained enough, injured, busy, caring for my aging parent, experiencing loss, or feeling lost, but the physical act of running remains the same, simple and true. No matter how low I feel emotionally, if I can run, I will. I need it to numb my pain sometimes and lift me up, elevate my mood. Running lets me meditate, think through a conversation, a problem, what to write or even to not think and just run. Running is the throughline of my life’s story.

After my mom died, I made the monumental decision to move to California to live near family. I took a giant leap across the country into the unknown and running saved me again. Despite being a stranger in the strange land of San Jose and Silicon Valley, and essentially alone, I found my running tribe – a fitness community full of people I can relate to and run with. Fellow runners who get me and speak my language as we share miles and miles together, getting to know each other and pushing each other toward our fitness goals.

One afternoon as I walked to the mailboxes in my condo complex, a man I’d never seen before was polishing his pristine new car with a yellow chamois. He looked at me and said, got a race coming up? I smiled and said, yes, in July, the San Francisco Marathon. That 26.2 miles? he asked. Yes, I told him. He said, it’s hilly! Do you have run there to train? I told him, no, I’ve been training on other similar hills near here. Well, good luck to you, he said.

And just like that, I have my first fan in California.

-Barbara Zirl, May 21, 2019