Running Through 2022

A year of hits and runs

Dec 21, 2022

This newsletter is my third annual reflection on a year in running. You can read my reflections from 2020 (a year of disaster), and 2021 (a year of quitting).

By the end of 2021, my running felt painful. So, I hired a virtual coach with the goal of running a half marathon in the spring of 2022. My virtual coach was incredible. And I could feel myself getting stronger with each workout. One of the things I love so much about running is that it makes me feel strong in a world that conspires to make me feel weak.

One of the things my coach taught me was the counterintuitive lesson of running — in order to get fast, you have to go slow. This works because when you run slower and keep your heart rate steady, you allow your body to learn how to get blood to your muscles faster and more efficiently and build up your aerobic system. Your body needs slowness so it can learn how to build endurance. Your body needs slowness to learn how to last.

At the beginning of the year, I felt frustrated with my slow runs, especially as I slogged through the snow or did 10-mile runs on a treadmill in the basement, my kids coming in and out of the room asking for Pop-Tarts or begging me to let them watch Pokémon.

I was also frustrated with my runs because the harder I ran, the more weight I gained. I am on a long journey of divesting my sense of self-worth from the size of my body. And maybe no one needs another smallish white woman reflecting on her own image. But for so much of my life, I’d been praised for being small. And not violating that cardinal sin of taking up space. But here I was, my body insisting on bulking, and what was I going to do? Not eat? I was done with that. I kicked the scale under the bed.

In the spring I ran a half marathon with a sub-10-min/mile time. My fastest ever.

The year was just beginning.

After the race, I told my coach I wanted to continue to get faster. So, she worked in new workouts for me. I’d come home from a run soaked in sweat and drink a cold beer in the shower. The combination of the cold beer with the hot ache of my limbs makes me feel as if my skin is all sensation and sound.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade. And I went to a protest. It was a small protest—fewer than 200 people.

Cedar Rapids is the second-largest city in the state but with a population of around 136,000; sometimes it does feel like a small town. And the protest, held in a parking lot across from the courthouse, was filled with friends and elected officials, and elected officials who are friends. After the speeches, a smaller number of people, around 150, marched through downtown, careful to stay on the sidewalks, waving our signs.

By the time we returned to the parking lot where our protest had begun, the group had winnowed. Signs were down. Arms were tired. People were making plans to meet up for drinks and dinner. I had just crossed the busy street when I turned around and saw a truck pull out from behind two cars and drive through the intersection where protesters were scurrying through against a light that had just changed.

Driving slowly through the crosswalk, he trapped people on the front of his bumper. Others rushed out to help pull them off. People were banging on the side of the truck, begging him to stop. From the road, I saw the face of the driver, screaming, his neck tendons visible. He drove away, leaving two women injured.

The next morning, I woke up and went for a run. As I ran down a busy street, a large truck drove by me and honked its horn. I’m sure it was friendly. Most often the honks are friendly, but the sound of the horn terrified me. I stumbled and fell into someone’s yard and cried. Eventually, I stood up and walked home, crying the whole way.

But power only wants you as long as it can use you, as long as you stay in place. Once you grow too loud, it runs you over and tosses you out. And anyway, what is “too loud” except a complaint voiced that no one wants to hear?

For the next four weeks, I couldn’t run in the city streets without crying. I didn’t feel safe. My feelings of safety running in streets have always been unsteady. I’ve had cars almost hit me pulling out of parking lots. Men leaning out of cars have screamed things like “bitch” and “cunt” and “cow” and “marry me.” Which is truly the perfect encapsulation of misogyny. Earlier that summer, a different man, in a different truck, mad because I’d turned him down for a date, had been driving back and forth in front of my house. I did not feel safe, but I didn’t want to cede my city to these men.

There had been in my 20 years of running, times when I’d retreated, running on gym treadmills or in my basement. But I’d begun running outside in 2020 when everything shut down. And I had familiar routes and patterns. I watched people rebuild from the derecho. Roofs broken, then blanketed in blue tarp, then fixed again. I loved seeing friends drive by. I loved watching the gardens of neighbors start with the bright pinks and blues of tulips, before filling out with the lush greens of summer, ending in the bright zinnias and starry mums of fall. This city was mine too.

Running the streets of my town has become part of my belonging — mapping with my feet the patterns of my life, orienting myself in this world of tangled alliances, affections, and grudges. My way of finding a path through the homes and sidewalks and businesses.

I did not want to let go of that. I didn’t want to disappear.

I had tweeted about the attack as it occurred, and the tweet went viral. Hundreds of people tried to argue with me that our bodies were in the way, that we hadn’t been acting appropriately, that it was our fault, that if only we’d twisted and bent and bowed, we could create a world where a man wouldn’t want to drive through us with his truck. People analyzed the video, arguing with me that I wasn’t a reliable narrator for what I’d witnessed. Some local media outlets gave more credibility to the version told by the police than the version told by witnesses and victims. Many local outlets didn’t even report that there were two victims until well after the attack.

The world is always asking me to stop taking up space. Demanding that I modulate my tone, my voice, my body. Be smaller and quieter.

I hear these demands as fear. Fear of upsetting the fragile balance of safety. Fear of growing so large and unwieldy that a balance of power, with which they’ve made a careful alliance, is upset.

So, I kept running. Except, those runs looked more like run, cry, and then walk. I’d remind myself of the lesson I learned earlier in the year, sometimes our bodies need to be slow. Sometimes it’s the only way to build power.

In a recent hearing, the lawyer for the man who drove through the protesters argued that the case should be moved; it had drawn too much media attention. When I read that, I thought, “Yeah, imagine not feeling safe in your own city.” Ironic.

On some of these run/walks, I listened to Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, in which she talks about the power of presence in the physical streets: “This is the highest ideal of democracy — that everyone can participate in making their own life and the life of the community — and the street is democracy’s greatest arena, the place where ordinary people can speak, unsegregated by walls, unmediated by those with more power…. Parades, demonstrations, protests, uprisings, and urban revolutions are all about the members of the public moving through public space for expressive and political rather than purely practical reasons.”

My presence as a white woman in running shoes on city streets is not really a political act. And I need to be careful that my right to exist creates room rather than closes it up. And in my act of taking up space, I hope it is always to create more space around me and to exist alongside others, not to push others out. There are far more marginalized and policed bodies — queer bodies, fat bodies, trans bodies, and bodies of color. And I wasn’t fooling myself. No amount of miles through downtown could make my city safer. But it felt important somehow. A promise made to myself, for myself, permission to exist fully in the world. This world. My world. My city.

I cannot wait for permission to exist. I have to just take it. I have to put on my shoes and show the fuck up.

And so, I keep running.

Be part of the Relay Iowa Team!

The Flyover Discord community led by Beau Anderson is organizing a team for Relay Iowa 2023. It’s an event where a team of us will run a three-day relay from Sioux City to Dubuque. We already have a team of 6 people registered. And the teams can be up to 12 people. If you are interested, fill out this form. And we will be in touch. The early-bird discount deadline for sign-ups is Dec 31. After that, the deadline for sign-ups is April 16.

Beau also said he’d answer some questions in the comments.