I run five days a week in all kinds of weather. I say “run,” but my pace is turtlesque. Some observers think I’m walking.
To be honest, I’m a little irritated when passersby say, “Enjoy your walk,” or friends mention having seen me “out walking.” Don’t they notice how high I’m picking up my feet, how vigorously I’m pumping my arms bent at the elbows, just as I did when I was a sprinter in high school? Aren’t I the image of that teen-age runner but in, well, slow-motion?
Apparently not.
Apparently I am more a “Portrait in Courage,” the snarky nickname characters in the Jenny Shank short story “Casa del Rey” give to a neighbor who “moved slower than the pace at which most people walked, but we could tell by the way he pumped his arms that he thought of it as running.”
For the record, I pass plenty of actual walkers on my run.
I know people are just trying to connect when they offer friendly greetings to a purported perambulator. I smile at their encouragement and slog on. I’m going fast enough, as is attested every year when my doctor compliments me on my healthy numbers for blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol. My stats are kind of astonishing if you consider that during this and every other Girl Scout Cookie season, I posit that a sleeve of Thin Mints is a single serving. Why else are they packaged that way? My sweet tooth has its own an unshakeable logic.
Good thing my will to run also is unshakeable.
On one recent snowy morning, a stranger shoveling his sidewalk saw me on my jaunt, called out a hello and asked me to wait. As I said, I get out there no matter what - there’s no bad weather, only bad clothing. I layer on the gear in all the latest miracle fabrics and venture forth even when the forecast warns of the possibility of frostbite.
The sidewalk shoveler apologized for the interruption as he crossed the street to introduce himself and shake my Thinsulated hand. He told me he’d almost had a stroke a few years ago, but had hesitated to address his health until he’d seen me on my rounds. He said I’d inspired him to get some exercise and that his health had improved.
“People don’t always say when they see you,” he said. “I’ve seen you walking for years.”
“You have a good day,” I said, beaming.
“And keep exercising!” I added, settling on an umbrella term with which I can live.
“You, too,” he responded.
I will. I surely will.