admin Here is a scene that happens in movies: An actor goes for a run, and they run like they’re fleeing, breathless, the pound of feet on pavement an existential rattle. They’re not wearing headphones; nevertheless, you hear a song, an echo of their emotions. The actor is sweating, fists pumping up and down in stride, their hair tendrils stick to their temples like syrup. As the music crescendos so does their speed. They’re running faster and faster, full tilt until they bend over, buckling at the knees. Usually there’s something scenic behind them, like a river or the yolk of a sunset.
Sometimes, when I run, I pretend that this actor in a movie is me. I’m Rocky, trailed by cheering children. I’m Clarice, crunching orange leaves at Quantico. The music piped through my earbuds reminds me I’m flying, a cinematic sprint. In the back of my mind, I know I bear little resemblance to this mosaic of movie scene runners. That’s okay. Even adults need to play pretend.
I’m not like the actors in the movies because when I run, I do so at an unhurried pace. I’m molasses. I let the minutes roll into miles without glancing at my watch, my thoughts filaments in a whirlpool, circling into the emptiness until I forget I exist. If my legs or my lungs require it, I’ll slow to a walk, my sternum rising and falling like the tide until I catch my breath, allowing myself to take in the world around me. A vibrant half moon glowing like God. The smell of soil and sun and rebirth.
“I run in order to acquire a void,” writes Haruki Murakami in his memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. “As I run I tell myself to think of a river…. But essentially I’m not thinking of a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence.” Like Murakami, I prefer to exist in this void, the somewhere between thinking and not-thinking. Though when I force myself to run too fast, it’s hard to find my way there.
In our culture, adopting a slower pace is considered easier than speed. That was never the case for me. When I was a college athlete, a soccer player, I’d run so rough on the treadmill my knees cracked like kernels. I’d follow the lead of climaxing choruses, pace and heart rate rising in tandem with the music. I’d press buttons shaped like shooting arrows, incline up, pace up, puffing my chest, in fight or flight, running for my life, one more minute, one more step, an acrobat on a moving plane of hard plastic.
