The Run

It is a perfect Florida winter day, crisp and 42°F. I glance at the blue cloudless sky and the shore, high tide, as I drop from the sailboat gunnel to the pier and head west. An offended heron startles and takes awkward flight from the closest piling, croaking out its pterodactyl protest. The sun is warm on my back, a cool southwest breeze is in my face, and there’s a salt tang in the air.

I am kitted out for the run. Belted around my waist: 16 oz weak lemonade, a sweet packet of Strawberry Kiwi Roctane, ten dollars, and my sheepshead line knife with marlinspike. This last travels everywhere with me. Too many times I have seen an errant line wrap improbably and dangerously around a cleat, a piling, a stanchion as a boat motors from the pier, and this knife is essential to cut the straining vessel free.

I feel cut free myself as I run along Ponce. My knees complain, but softly. They will warm up and enjoy this run as well. I start slowly, practicing a new gait I am learning that will spare them, and gradually pick up speed.

At the corner of Ponce and King awaits my first challenge. In the middle of the sidewalk our local homeless schizophrenic, the Boxer, gesticulates, jabs at, and argues with foes that only he can see. I feel two things at once: relief that this wild man appears unscathed after the cold night and apprehension as I see he is blocking my path. Traffic zooms too quickly for me to skirt him in the street, so I follow my marathoner husband’s advice and treat the man as I would an unavoidable bear on a woodland trail.

I make myself “big”.  I exaggerate and widen my arm pumps, lengthen my stride, step high with my knees, and convert my quiet breathing to loud weightlifter “whooshes”. The Boxer eyes me, drops his fists, and retreats to the verge. Now I have a clear path to downtown, the park, the bridge, wherever I want to go. Traffic noise recedes as I leave the highway behind me and enter sleepy neighborhoods.

My thoughts whirl freely. Running is the closest I ever come to achieving the peace that I am told meditation provides. But in place of meditation’s touted goal, the absence of thought, my head is filled with travelling thoughts, ideas, smells, sights, sounds. They wheel kaleidoscopically through my mind, each one touching it briefly, then flitting away to be replaced by others. I enjoy the interior/exterior scenescape, (in “Smell-Around”!) and for a brief time forget to worry, forget to be anxious, forget to anticipate.

My brain slides through time as I jog thru Lincolnville, passing the two old men smoking on their porch. We are each other’s early morning regulars, so we salute and greet each other as I pass. Rounding the path around Maria Sanchez Lake, I see Bob, a fisherman, casting his seine net for bait fish. He will use these mullet minnows later, drifting in his skiff with rod in hand to catch flounder, sheepshead, red and black drum. As usual, standing a few paces behind him, is his faithful fishing buddy, majestic and tall. It’s a great white egret, whom Bob has christened Herman. Herman stands like a statue on one thin black leg, with the other gracefully bent and tucked under his luminous feathers. He waits patiently at his favorite restaurant for breakfast to be served.

This morning, I will attempt Vilano Bridge. This is a challenge for me, as my hill training days in Maryland are years behind me, and I’ve become spoiled by the flat Florida terrain. As I ascend, I shorten my steps, slightly increase my turnover rate. As the climb becomes harder, I focus on the jewel-colored water below, with its encrustation of marine vessels, large and small. I glance up into the crazed raptor gaze of ospreys, who rend their prey atop every other light stanchion and eye me silently.

Just before the crest, when I really want to stop, I conjure screengrabs from the “highlights film” of my life.  I evoke adrenaline-filled memories: Pushing my daughters into this world, suturing a toddler’s eye-lid; tacking C Ghost sharply away from a sudden coalescence of hazy sky that morphs into a hissing waterspout to our starboard. I imagine myself a hero, a firefighter, a cop, a soldier, and I crest the bridge’s peak, slow and straining, but still running.

On the descent, I open up, accelerate, feeling my stride lengthen and the anticipated rush of euphoria. This gravity assist propels me to speeds I will never achieve on flat ground unless I am running from the apocalypse, or towards a loved one in peril. Comfortably sweaty, enjoying the feeling of my limbs loose and limber, my mind refreshed, I head towards home.

I climb into the cockpit, shed my shoes, and flop onto the cockpit cushions. I ice my left knee and decide I can hold off a few months longer before going for another cortisone shot.

Am I addicted to running? Perhaps, but the sense of well-being that floods me via endorphins or beatitude when I run is precious, nearly vital. If I am addicted, I consider this pathway to a moment of exultant clarity and physical exhilaration to be healthier and more authentic than the manner in which I once chased elation via vodka.

I pray that I will always be able to run, or if not to run, then to walk, or even wheel myself around. There is nothing comparable in this life to propelling myself through my world, being submerged in the moving photo drama without and within.

I know that right now my knees are my rate-limiting step. I hope to always retain the gift of ambulation, but I know there are no guarantees. No one knows what time may spare them or the future purloin. Knees, back, brain, are all growing older, growing old. That is certain, but much is unknown. If someday my gray matter loses the trick of cohesion and leaves me lost in a discontinuous, bewildering present, I hope I’ll still stumble occasionally upon a flashback of this muscle memory.  I hope I’ll be able to relive the miracle, the marvel, the extraordinary gift of The Run.

My husband ascends the companionway stairs and looks at me, “How was your run?”

I smile at him, wipe my face with my shirt hem.

“Great.”  My grin widens, “Just great.”

Paula Lyons, MD

March 1, 2020