Running Just Kind of Snuck Up on Me

MAYBE IT'S MY farmer blood, but athletics was not a word I grew up with. We swam in the ocean, but that was really just jumping around in the waves. Hiking was acceptable, because that was Nature, which involved admiring the view and recognizing birds and plants and mountain ranges.

But athletics - the idea of spending an afternoon playing tennis or soccer, and even worse, in uniform (Raver 16) - well, the unspoken feeling in our family was that this was frivolous. If you were going to go out and sweat and build muscles, why not bring the hay in at the same time? Or build a new pighouse?

So when a friend talked me into running the "Dreaded Winter Series," six short races that weave about Middle Island in January and February, my parents were rather nonplussed.

"Aren't you a little old for that?" asked Dad, who's 81. Running, in his view, is something children do, and refrigerators, if they're GE.

Mother was worried about the pounding. "What about your legs?" she said. "Can't you find a pool somewhere?" She's all for a kinder, gentler exercise, such as reading or yoga. At 78, she still does the plow.

I didn't try explaining myself. I couldn't have, anyway. Running just sort of sneaked up on me. I'd been jogging, lackadaisically, for years. Not out of some rhapsodic communion with the road under my feet or the leaves over my head or anything. I'd simply discovered that 20 minutes of easy running allowed me to eat a whole bag of Utz potato chips and still button my pants. But I'd never dreamed of running a race, of even running with another person. To me, running was a chance to be alone - or with my dog. Who is in great shape for an 11-year-old, and she doesn't even do the plow.

But it's kind of like those people who say they hate olives -until they swallow one by mistake. I was visiting friends in Boston a few years ago, when they invited me to the Jingle Bell Run around Boston Common. They all had antlers on their heads, so I figured this was the group for me. Off we ran, hundreds of us, in all shapes and sizes, jogging down Beacon Street with bells on our toes, singing Christmas carols in glorious off-key.

This wasn't a race, it was more like that old movie, "The Queen of Hearts," when all the inmates are let out of the mental institution, and they run through town, having a wonderful time. The camaraderie - or was it the lack of oxygen? - made me giddy. So when a friend told me I could stuff myself on free strawberry shortcake this summer if I only ran 3 miles in the Mattituck Strawberry Festival, I said why not?

Little did I know that I'd stuck my toe in a world of "intervals" and "fast-twitch" muscles and books like "The Runner's Handbook," by Bob Glover, which lays out weekly training schedules and analyzes belly breathing and running shoes and what you should eat to run. (Wait a second: I run to eat chips, not to give them up.)

Even worse, I was beginning to run with people. I jogged with a friend one morning - who's training seriously - and thought I'd die going up the hills of St. James. I walked them, actually, when my heart told me to, but pushing myself that extra bit - enough to get the old endorphins flowing - gave me a taste of that post-run euphoria I'd heard so much about but never believed existed. I'd just figured they were talking about the natural elation anyone would feel after the whipping stopped. But this was something else entirely. This was like a drug - only the prescription was in my body.

And it could be used, to such good effect, to maneuver through life's muddy waters: the lover who left, the job that fell through, the fight with Dad or Mom or the landlord. The problem never disappears, of course. It just doesn't sit there on your chest like a giant gorilla turned to stone. Some glimmer of a solution might show up in the shower, along with the shin splints, after the 4-mile run.

I know, I know. I sound like a born-again runner. Amen.

On Sundays, my church is a country road, full of dogs and children and people even older than I, trotting through Ralph Epifanio's "Dreaded Winter Series." Epifanio is a specialneeds teacher and avid runner from Middle Island who's been organizing races around here for almost 20 years. He also writes and edits a monthly magazine called Islandwide Runner that features down-home articles about racing and shoes and sweat and so on, as well as the results of past races and notices of future ones.

Ralph's races are known for their prizes: toy dinosaurs for kids, scenic photographs that Ralph took when he was thinking about becoming a photographer, pink flamingos. You usually get a T-shirt or a sweatshirt or a coffee cup with a calendar on it just for finishing. (The farmer in me likes this. If you're going to go out and sweat, you'd better have something to show for it.)

I like runners, I've discovered. They are quirky, loner types, whose competitive spirit is not tied to the kind of cooperation required by football, say, where the team barrels down the field, each man knocking over his appointed knockee, in order to keep the ball in motion. Winning a race does not even mean coming in first (a thrill I shall leave to others). It's more about pushing past your own personal record. Or even just enjoying yourself as the scenery flows by and the people wave from their ranch houses and their dogs join in for a block or two. And you think of all that pasta at the end.

It's a funny thing, this running addiction. It's not just those endorphins, which are quite real. It's a sense of energy and well-being that extends through the day, long after the natural drug has worn off.

It's probably just as simple a thing as realizing that your body really is your machine. And that you have to treat it at least as well as your car. I mean, I don't buy really cheap gas, and I'd never let my Trooper eat potato chips.