My alarm goes off at 5 AM, but lately I’m already awake to dismiss it. I’m not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but I love solitude and on the streets of New York, if you want to run mostly alone, you have rise before the sun.
I sleep in two stubby, curly pigtails so I can just slip on a headband, my uniform of cropped microfiber pants, one of my beloved and now-discontinued Duck sports bras, t-shirt, fleece, and ugly but sublime-feeling New Balances. I keep a mug of cold coffee by my bed that I down like medicine, before grabbing my phone, Metrocard and head out the door.
I walk the first ten blocks south towards Central Park. I have a negligible amount of cartilage left in my knees so this warm-up is vital. Also, it’s incredibly meditative to quietly absorb the peace of early morning central Harlem before my own discomfort drowns out the scenery.
Around 113th I slip into a jog. It’s creaky, cracky, jolty and unpleasant. The first mile is always the worst. As I head into the park every part of my body wants me to stop this madness. Serotonin overload joins forces with my hips and knees to slow me down. I’m never sure what part of me actually wants to be doing this, but somehow, usually, I keep going.
Once in the park, I have a choice. The gentle, lightly “wooded” hills that lead to my comfort zone of the Upper West Side? Or the flat trail that leads to the Upper East Side, where there will be more people, but mostly people I loathe and loathing is a terrific motivator.
Today I choose the Upper East Side. I creak and crack around the Harlem Meer, where there are a few ducks with their beaks still tucked into their wings. A small piece of my mind has space to envy the ducks, tucked into tight little balls. They weren’t gifted with their chubby mother and grandmother’s metabolism and potential for catastrophic health problems. They get to sleep, while I have to get up and struggle against a fate that sometimes seems inevitable.
As I draw parallel with the first of many playgrounds I will pass, I break the serotonin barrier and things begin to suck a bit less. I pick up speed and have to make another choice, through the park to the reservoir? Or outside and alongside the park? This choice depends on what type of running I’m doing today. If I’m going to do a Tabata run, then it’s outside and on the straightaway. If this is just a steady endurance day, then it’s off to the reservoir.
It’s a Tabata day, so I head out of the park around 107th Street. A friend turned me on to Tabatas when she visited last November. It’s a sprinting interval program, great for the easily bored. Twenty second full sprint, ten second recovery. Repeat for four minutes, five times. It is brutal and miserable. The only way I get through it is to put myself in somewhat of a trance state. I cue up a song and hit repeat. Depending on my mood, it’s Adele “Rolling in the Deep”, AC/DC “If You Want Blood”, The Donnas “Take it Off”, “Beyonce’s “Work it Out” or Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”. I’m more committed to those songs than I am to most of my interpersonal relationships.
And I’m off.
Like those first couple minutes of my jog, the first Tabata cycle is awful. I immediately start sweating buckets and my lungs seize like I was just dropped into a freezing pond. No matter how many times I do this workout, my body has to relearn it from scratch and it is painful every time. The world narrows down to seconds that tick by on my iPhone timer and each one takes an eternity to flick past. Then, suddenly, mercifully, the cold coffee I gulped down earlier begins to kick in. My body remembers that running, sprinting, is something that it can do, not well, exactly, but at least it stops treating the exertion like a poorly matched transplanted organ.
I labor through the next four Tabata cycles, eyes down on the uneven cobblestone path that rings Central Park. If I pass or am passed by another runner, I’m unaware. I’m deep in the song of the day and my laboring body, and problematically unaware of my surroundings. Thoughts that spend most of their time repressed, begin to float to the surface. Generally, I’m a doer. I can spend straight months hurtling from one task or goal to the next and never stop to breathe or take a look around. The only way I seem to be able to meditate or process information is when I completely override my system with discomfort, Running, Bikram yoga, almost drowning in a freezing river etc.. I have to put my body in extremely uncomfortable states to find any sort of clarity. I think this, as much as wanting smaller pants and to not become incapacitated at the age of 48, is why I run.
Once the Tabatas are complete I slow down to a walk. My legs throb, I’m dripping sweat, sucking wind and approaching the 72nd St. crosstown bus. I come back to the world while I wait for the bus, that will take me to the train, that will take me home. I notice the sun rising. Whether the trees are blooming. And for a few minutes, before the bus comes and takes me back to my breakneck, edge-of-disaster life, I feel firmly tethered to the world.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
