Slacker

It's raining here today for the third time. Tropical and gentle, with random bursts of downpour. I always knew it rained in the jungle, but I guess I never really understood just how much. This weather pattern almost feels normal now after 9 months. There was a little break for a few weeks from the rain, but so brief, it hardly registered as more than little. The cicadas are back now, too, with their tiresome screeching. Summer has official arrived in Vero.

I read email from Jen yesterday, one of my best and most reliable old running partners from home. It saddened me when she told me she no longer makes the effort to get to the Tuesday and Thursday morning speed workouts anymore; she has tired of the drama and the drive to get there, so she has opted for runs around her neighborhood with Susan, another reliable. I am not sure which part made me sad? The idea that everything has changed so radically from what I once knew as my favorite workout? That my favorite people have fallen out of the habit of it? I am sure Henry and John and Mike and Renee still find their way there, but I've heard the dynamic has shifted.

My response to her was a truthful and genuine effort to affirm her new routine of speed on the tread mil with an ipod. I told her how after we succumbed to Florida, I really felt as though I might die without those heart-pounding, lung crushing, lactic acid burning workouts. Through email, I recounted how I lived and died for those track workouts, the tempo runs, the hill repeats and mile after endless mile around campus every week. When we moved here, I knew how terrifying it would be to do something so different.

I knew I had to reinvent my workouts to maintain some kind of sanity and inspiration in my routine. Here, the track requires us to climb tall, slippery gates and hide in the shadows when the cops drive by. The tempo runs here are so much harder with the oppressive humidity and hills truly do not exist. The wind has the power to blow us off the top of the bridges when we run miles, that is, when it is cool enough to not have to stop every 4 minutes to take in more water. What kind of runner would I possibly become? I felt like I was losing more and more with each passing week, and it killed me to know what I left behind; to know that life went on without me there and they were all still having fun running Blacks Beach or Bishops and Chunks.

But as I wrote to Jen, I realized something as it was in black and white before me. I am still a runner, but I have become a different kind of runner. I have had to reinvent what running means to me and what motivates me to put my shoes on every day. Here, I do not have the same reliable running resources. I don't have the beautiful, rolling hills along the Pacific or mild climate. Half the time when I would clamor over that black iron gate at the track, none of the Florida slackers would even show up. So I ran in solitude in the dark, sometimes with the sky crackling its fury above me, warning of the pending storms. I thought how stupid I was, the Californian who could not give up the workout due to a little lightning (that could have very well killed me). Everyone else knew to stay in bed after they checked the radar, but I needed that workout.

Slowly, I became friends with Lori, and while she will never take the place of Jen or anyone else, she has filled the lonely void. She will meet me for the early mile repeats or the tempos or 800s. We have created our own little speed calendar we follow religiously, despite the dilapidated track we run on. For the other days on which people are so hit or miss, I have to find it all within myself to get out there and go, often alone, in the dark. As much as all of these guys train for this Iron Man or that marathon, they are always training haphazardly, around their drinking schedules or wine tastings. There is some organization to their chaos, but for the most part, many of these guys are fly by the seat of their pants. It is true that Craig and Kimmie are very reliable warm bodies on the Tuesday/ Thursday tempo runs around the bridge loops, but most of the runners here are pick-ups along the way somewhere, if they decide to roll out of bed. But, at least I do have Craig, Kimmie and Lisa for the long weekend runs, mundane as the course is we always run over and over. Abbe, while lovable, embodies what a slacker runner really is: promises to be there at 4:30 am and then always, always sends a text over in the morning, "Going back to bed".

In all of this, I think I have come into a more meaningful, mature love of this sport. I think I have become less anal. Truly. I don't want to compare it to the dizzy high school crush that has matured into the comfortable, reliable marriage kind of love. I am still crazy about running and have a passion for it that defies understanding when I think of the monotony of my feet on the pavement. It is just that I kind of like that attitude of, "Hey, let's sign up for this race and that one, and maybe we will actually go and race." My Florida friends all wear their Garmins and clock the miles, but then travel hundreds of miles to races and turn off their alarms and sleep in if the weather is less than ideal. My friends here have a more laid back approach to running that used to annoy me, even make me feel superior that I was more consistent. That lax attitude would strike fear in my heart that I might become that runner with *gasp* balance, if I hung around them too much, as though it were a dreadful and highly contagious leprosy. As much as I hate to admit it, they have won me over to the middle somewhere.

So, why do they still call me "Quad"? AAAA Personality I am not so much anymore when I think of where I started from. I just may not even wear my watch for Rock N Roll to prove it to myself. I'll see how I feel when I wake up Sunday.