Third Time’s a… Swim

So I had a minor melt-down yesterday about the neighborhood, and web-logging (ugh, I hate the word “blog”), and also about my love-love relationship with running. I had two spectacularly not-great runs in a row- one last week, and another yesterday morning. I didn’t write about the former, both because it was during exams week and I didn’t have time, and also because it was terrible. The combination of wind and drizzle, muddy slush, pigeon shit, loud traffic, run-down houses, and- to top it off- a dude who barked directly into my ear as I passed (what in the hell?) was almost too much. Only when a bus drove by me and sent a wave of cold, brown water across my body did it officially become too much.

I didn’t really want to go for a run yesterday, but I was a teensy bit unwell (read: The end of exams week? Whiskey and sausage and sauerkraut at Resi’s Bierstube? Sure thing!). I needed to move and feel healthy again. It wasn’t a bad run, but it was grey and flat and I felt very alone. The only people I saw were on their way to Hungarian and Polish churches on Irving Park- people in nice long coats tiptoeing around piles of snow and speaking unfamiliar languages. I felt alone, and I felt like I needed to run down the clock.

So I ran up and down different streets, hoping an hour would pass. I can’t remember the last time (if there ever was one) when I ran just to say I did, seeking no exciting destination and expecting no peaceful outcome. I hate admitting that, and I hated feeling that. So I came home and took off my running clothes and cried.

I often use running as an excuse to have an extra cookie or beer (or both!), but the truth is that I actually just really love it. I love that I feel something when I run- air on my face and sweat on my arms and achy feet- and I love that running permits me an almost secret understanding of a place. I know the sweet smell of my old neighborhood during an early evening rain; the way my ankles feel when I run up the trails at Devil’s Lake; how sometimes on summer mornings the Cascades are silhouetted like a construction paper cut-out. I don’t know any of those things here, and I can’t seem to find anything out. I’m going to keep running, of course, but I certainly don’t want to keep up web-logging (that’s a lot to write) if I’m just going to gripe all the time.

So for something light-hearted:

I decided to swim at the Y today. I’m not a very good swimmer, and I hate being in pools when there are lots of svelte, confident people training for triathlons. I’m so slow! And I’m terribly competitive, so I invariably end up coughing and breathless and feeling pathetic as everyone passes me for the fourth time. That definitely did not happen today at the Irving Park Y; there were only three of us (me and a much older woman and a young lifeguard) in the pool area. And good thing, too, because the elastic on the left leg-hole (there’s got to be a better word) of my swimming suit was shot and I didn’t realize it until it fluttered up like a little skirt during my first lap. My most hearty apologies to the lifeguard, for I definitely bare-assed him every time I swam to the deep end of the pool.