CW: food, weight loss/gain
I've been running for a long time. I did cross-country as a kid (terrible), switched to sprinting (better, but still lost out to the more naturally athletic kids), and then got back into longer distances toward the end of university. When I started university I was just over 140 lbs at 5'10". The blissful, ravenous metabolism of the teenage years. I ate and ate and ate. My dad would give me shit for the amount of milk I drank (sometimes almost 2L/day). And still if I laid on my back and pulled up my shirt, you could see my ribs, run your finger along my hip bone.
Four years of undergrad took care of that. Mini-pizzas, A&W, cafeteria food, Pita Pit; full sugar Coke from the vending machines; $5 burger/fries/small beer at a local pub during the week. By the end I'd put on 35 lbs, and I wasn't going to the gym, so it's not like much of that was muscle. One of my friends was in the same boat, having put on a bunch of weight during his engineering degree. We decided to do something about it, and started to run.
The first few mornings were agony. We didn't know what we were doing, we were woefully out of shape, all of that. But after a couple of weeks, we found a rhythm. A couple of months and we'd lost a few pounds. By the end of the summer, we'd stopped running together - I'd moved in with my girlfriend, and my friend and I lived too far away to meet and run anymore. But we both kept at it. I know he's done at least one half marathon, and judging by pictures on social media is still in great shape; I've done a dozen, plus a bunch of shorter races. I'm not particularly good, but I have the cardiovascular strength to start running and keep going for a couple of hours pretty easily. I'm slow but steady. And every winter the same routine: I stop running, I forget my metabolism's slower, I put on a bit of weight. Every spring I look hatefully at the pants and shirts that are now inexplicably tighter. Love your body and all that, but my mental image of myself is young and slender and beautiful, even though I know this is no longer the case, can no longer be the case. But, regardless, I start to run.
I have two dogs, and I take them. One's older (twelve now), one younger (almost two). This morning it was beautiful out, and my younger dog has had a terrifying amount of energy, and my shirts are tighter, so I decided it was time to get started again. I slipped into the same sweatpants I wore when I started running with my friend back in 2003. Put on a running shirt, laced up my New Balances. And ran. My younger dog led the way, as expected; my older dog kept up and seemed happy to go. I saw the ponds melting. I heard the rusty-gate cry of the red-winged blackbirds, and saw one perched atop a tree. And so we went around the neighbourhood for half an hour, then got in. I dried the dogs off, had a shower myself.
Running is the only form of exercise for me that's ever really stuck. And I'm happy that, now past 40, I haven't had any physical issues that would prevent me from running. I've always been careful not to overdo it, having had friends who've fucked up their knees and legs from running without off-days on pavement and asphalt. In the summer I usually run every other day. Time to rest. Time for the older dog to rest. And sometimes I sneak in a quick run with the younger in the evening, waiting for my older dog to fall fast asleep, knowing he needs his rest and not wanting to chance the deeply injured look he gives me if he realizes that the younger dog's been running and he hasn't.