Run 43: Gut Shabbes

Miles: 7

Other runners: 15?

The apartment building where I’m staying is home to a lot of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews; today, which is Shabbat, I’m fairly sure I encountered every single one on my run. It was admittedly a little unnerving at first: I had planned to anonymously venture down the shady boulevards to Van Cortlandt Park, and instead I passed family after family, so many men in black, so many women in conservative dresses and gorgeous hats, all looking at me. Wearing faded shorts and a ragged gray Green Bay Packers t-shirt that revealed the straps of my most obscene (and also most clean) hot-pink sports bra, I felt inappropriate. Disrespectful.

And then the veil was lifted, and people started commenting. One old man strolling slowly with his adult children and grandchildren across the street paused and shouted, “Keep running! I will come and join you! I’m just going home now to change!” His kids waved at me, a little embarrassed, and I ran on, smiling. Another middle-aged woman with an absolutely perfect up-do called out, “Burn some calories for me, honey!”

It was fine. I was fine.