“But at my back I always hear/ Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;” — Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
The day I turned 29 last week, I slipped into some running shoes, clipped on a lightweight backpack and ran out into the dawn streets toward the bus station. I felt tightness in my tendons already. Would I be able to run the miles this year?
Most of us follow some birthday traditions in our lives: blowing out candles, accepting presents, getting together with friends for drinks. Such rituals foster good times, but also lend significance to the otherwise capricious passage of time. They put a brave face on the reality that each birthday brings us one year closer to that inevitable appointment with the reaper. Well-rounded and wholesome-minded souls might be unperturbed by this truth — for them a birthday is another milestone in a roadside built up with monuments to their accomplishments.
For those of us who are prone to rumination, for questions about the road not taken, there is something irrevocable and unsettling about suddenly becoming a year older. It’s the feeling of walking down the hall and hearing a thousand doors slamming shut behind.
So, I am not this person that I was supposed to be. Why haven’t I done that yet.
In the face of such questions, my solution is to inject significance into the day with a challenge: running the distance, in miles, of my age in years.
This is a challenge that my dad has been doing for a while now — albeit these days, he is also biking and kayaking to finish the miles. When he turned 50, he did run 50 birthday miles.
He started me running, biking and kayaking on my birthdays as I grew up.
I tried my first all running day when I turned 19, freshman year of college. I had meticulously planned an out and back course, only to find a freight train parked on the tracks, 8 miles into the run. There was no way around, and the fact that I could here the train engines running made crawling under the cars a sketchy prospect at best.
I reluctantly turned around, staggered up to my dorm room with 16 miles logged, and went online to map out the last three miles that I had to run.
I went on to run birthday’s 20, 21 and 22 on that same bike path, though I went in the opposite direction to avoid the possibility of getting hung up in the same way.
The experience of running the birthday miles built my confidence for my first marathon, which I ran at age 22.
For the next couple years, I skipped the birthday miles because I’d have a marathon within a month or so, and counted a marathon distance instead.
Once I turned 27, I had to run more than a 26.2 marathon course. I was in North Carolina, not in great running shape, and camping with some friends on the Appalachian Trail. I planned to skip the miles, and yet, when I woke up early, I found myself in running shoes, with plans for a short run along the trail. The trail run turned into 17 miles with a big climb above the Nantahala River valley. Then when I got back to the tent, with everyone starting to wonder what the hell had happened to me, I announced that I would be running 10 more miles later that day, which I managed to hobble through in Smokey Mountain National Park.
I turned 28 while I was visiting Yosemite with my Dad, who I recruited into being my support driver. This time, I added a 2,000 foot climb on the road out of the park, and though I ran slowly, I ended up feeling fine right afterward.
A month later I was in Washington, and tried my hand at the North Olympic Discovery Marathon, which follows a bike path along the coast. There are no 2,000-foot climbs, but there are some steep little creek valleys to climb out of, and it can get hot. My 2:55 finish was a personal worst out of seven marathons, but it was fast enough to win the race.
I am going to run the race again this June, but I am terrified that some running hotshot is going to swoop in out of left field to kick my butt.
My birthday miles plan incorporated the marathon course so that I could get a psychological edge for next month. It helps to know the enemy ahead of time.
After I ran down to the bus station (1.6 miles), I made a connection that took me to the marathon start line at 7 Cedars Casino.
The casino was still closed up as I ran beneath the awning where the race had started last year, and clicked my watch. I had 2 liters of water on my back (too much), a couple Clif bars and a banana for fuel, as well as rain jacket squirreled away to guard against the possibility of precipitation. Luxury! If it rained on race day, I planned to tough it out in my race singlet and try running myself warm.
The fact that I had all this weight on my back, wasn’t really racing, etc. should have dialed down my competitive side, but I had set the watch, and couldn’t ignore its judgement. I didn’t allow myself to turn the watch off when I made bathroom breaks or went to grab food.
I chided myself for my brittle stride. Groin and achilles tendons were tightened up after a week of faster, longer, runs. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t will my legs to turn themselves over as fast as I wanted. I checked my watch with growing trepidation. I’ve gotten slower! I’m going to lose this damn marathon next month.
The course left the woods for the town of Sequim, where I brushed past high schoolers going to school on foot, bike and skateboard. There were also a number of elderly walkers — Sequim is extremely popular with retirees. On the outskirts of town, a sign announced that the trees overhead were frequented by bald eagles. I looked up, and saw none, though the snowy peaks nearby fir the bill as far as inspirational scenery I saw plenty of more gray-haired pedestrians negotiating the pavement with canes and walkers.
Yep, I thought. Keep moving. That’s the thing.
Movement is an obvious metaphor for life. Our feet can take us in many directions, dictated by circumstance, dictated by whims. As a runner I think of the fact that just about any long distance I’ve undertaken has had both highs and lows, moments of drudgery, thrills of discovery, disappointments and sometimes the realization that I am more capable than I had imagined.
I’ve often thought of the birthday miles as important because they recreate hardship, represent, overcoming the weight of years. Yet as I ran past the farm fields outside Sequim, I thought of how oppositional this thinking was. Some miles are better savored than conquered. If you aren’t having at least a little fun out there, you are doing something wrong.
On this particular run, I enjoyed seeing the buds coming out a little bit more on the trees. I enjoyed crossing the bridge above the Dungeness River, the waters running swift with snowmelt. Inevitably, I came back to the stiffness in my tendons and my strides.
Unfortunately, the hardest part of the course was still ahead. For a couple miles, creek drainages form a series of deep cuts into the landscape, creating severe ups and downs. I lost all semblance of graceful stride as I ground my way though the inclines. Finally, I emerged at the top of the last climb, about 6 miles out from the finish line. I was too shot to enjoy running down the hill.
I crossed the trestle above Morse Creek, and in another mile I was running along the shoreline for the final stretch to Port Angeles.
I took a quick stop to admire an enormous river otter that was frolicking out in the waves.
When I started up again, it was at an awkward lurch.
My watch was at 3:37 when I hit the finish line. If nothing else, it was still faster than Paul Ryan’s personal best marathon, so that was something. I clicked the watch off.
I still had to run 1.6 miles, climbing 300 feet of streets to get to my apartment.
This climb can be a bear after a long run. Nonetheless, I used the same motivation I’ve been using all year, which is to imagine the big Cascadia Subduction earthquake rattling the ground beneath my feet with tsunami sirens howling in my ears. As the vengeful wave curls toward the city, I keep running. I race the surging water as it climbs the streets after me. Sometimes, it races past my ankles at fifth street, but I always make high ground just before it knocks me down and rips me out to sea.
It may seem morbid that I enact this little scenario literally every time I run up that hill, just as dark, that I have the inevitability of death on the mind when I run birthday miles. Yet it is strong motivation for me to know that I can only do these things so long before I slow down and eventually stop. When I ran up the hill fleeing death in the form of an insurmountable wave crashing at my feet, I had a goal: to get home with a minimum of screwing around. Sometimes that’s the best you can ask for.