WOVEN: How to Become a Runner—A Braided Essay

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Somehow, it always seems to begin with the mother. The mother’s hand on the child’s head, holding it under water. The child desperately kicking and flailing her limbs. Thrashing around. Fighting for her life. Until she runs out of air, stops moving. The child is at peace. The mother’s hands, beating on the child’s chest. Bringing the child back to life. Water spewing from the child’s lungs. Choking. Gagging. Gasping for air.

 

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You’ll need good running shoes, and those won’t be cheap. I know, you’re probably thinking you’re unsure if running will even work for you, and you hate to spend the money. I say check your commitment. If your commitment is in place, then I caution you to resist the urge to skimp on shoes. Many young people can get away with cheap running shoes. The rest of us should take the necessary steps to get appropriate shoes for our feet and gait. Visit a running store. The professionals there will assess your feet and make recommendations. As you try on each pair, walk around the store in them. Ask the professional helping you if you can jog a little outside the store with each pair. Most running stores expect people to do this, to make absolutely sure the shoes are the best choice.

 

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One day out of the asylum, and one day before starting school, the child acts out violently. A broken child’s desperate attempt to release her anger—the anger she’s forbidden to even possess—which bubbles and boils inside her chest. Threatening to turn her inside out. The child somehow knows she will never tell anyone the details of her violence, or the way that her violent act calms the pending eruption within her. Nobody can ever know she fears herself and what she’s capable of doing.

 

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Just a few more running supplies to go. So, let’s talk about clothing. There are no steadfast rules here. Some people prefer to run in cotton shirts, others in 50/50, and still others in 100% polyester. Some people prefer to run in sweats or workout pants, others in shorts, and still others in leggings. Some people prefer to run in loose clothing, and others prefer tight. Be aware that your general preferences in day-to-day clothing might not translate directly over to your running clothes preference. My suggestion would be that you wait to invest in multiple sets of running clothes until you’ve tried out different styles and materials to learn what will work for you. As for a way to track your running, there are some effective running apps available for free. MapMyRun and Runtastic are two examples. At some point, you’ll probably want to invest in a decent running watch, like Garmin, but that’s not necessary right away… as long as you have some way to track your runs.

 

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The child fights with other kids in the classroom, and on the playground. Sometimes she gets bullied, provoked into a response of equal or greater intensity. Other times she starts the fights. Because violence is familiar to her. Because she’d rather hit first than sit around waiting and wondering when she will get hit. She never tells who started the fights. She always gets sent to the principal’s office for the paddle. The child doesn’t care about the paddle. There’s nothing that paddle can do that’s anywhere near as bad as what’s waiting for her at home.

 

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You’re ready to start running. First, it’s important to stretch! You can find many suggestions and ideas for running stretches online. Try them out, and figure out what stretching routine will work best for you. Once you are done stretching, it’s time to run! Walk for five minutes to warm up. Jog slowly for one minute. Brisk walk for one and a half minutes. Repeat the jog and brisk walk pattern until you’ve done it a total of eight times, or 20 minutes. Your last brisk walk will go right into a five-minute cool down walk. Repeat this 30-minute workout plan three times a week, for two weeks. Your running app will tell you the distance of each workout during the first two weeks. Go back and look over those runs. What was the total distance covered for each run? Many beginning middle-aged and older runners will find they’ve done around 1-1.5 miles per workout. You’ve completed your first two weeks and run at least 6 miles total!

 

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The teen quickly learns the cultural norms of living on the streets. Some people band together out there. Look out for each other as much as they can. Other people look out for only themselves. They’ll beat you and rob you blind of whatever meager possessions you have in a heartbeat. Or kill you in your sleep just because they can. Either way—even if you fall in with a group that will look out for you—you have to be hard to survive the streets. There’s no way around it. The teen never does fall in with a group. She trusts nobody. She survives the dangers of the streets by walling herself off from the anxieties and fears and phobias of the collective and making herself seem like the craziest and scariest motherfucker out there. And maybe she is the craziest and scariest motherfucker out there. She’s definitely at least one of them. The asylum trained her well for street life. Nobody messes with her.

 

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Beginning in week 3, do your five-minute warm-up and cool-down walks off the clock. Once you’ve warmed up, start your app and do the jog (one minute) and brisk walk (one and a half minutes) pattern until you’ve completed a total of 1.5 miles for each workout. This is not the time to worry about speed, you should only be concerned with distance. For weeks 4-6, do the jog and brisk walk pattern until you’ve completed a total of 1.75 miles for each workout. For weeks 7-12, do the jog and brisk walk pattern until you’ve completed a total of 2 miles for each workout. Look at you! You are so badass! You’ve completed twelve weeks of training and run at least 62 miles total!!

 

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The Man controls, intimidates, and beats the badass right out of the young adult. She doesn’t tell anyone, because there’s nobody to tell. Even if there was someone to tell, she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would kill her if she ever dared to tell. Because—along her journey—she’s learned that the more things change, the more they stay the same… and the rules are the rules no matter what. She hides her wounds, swallows her pain, and spends her days turning herself inside out trying to be enough.

 

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By now you’re probably feeling much stronger. And you’re probably also experiencing the runner’s high after each workout. It’s time to increase your distance per workout by a quarter mile per week. In week 13, you will do 2.25 miles per workout. In week 14, you will do 2.5 miles per workout. And so on. Continue ramping your distance in this way, until you hit 3.5 miles per workout in week 18. You’ve now run at total of at least 113 miles and the distance of a 5K (3.1 miles) on 6 separate workouts! Can you believe it?!? Guess what? It’s time to register for and run your first 5K race! Continue doing 3.5 miles per workout three times a week until race week. On race week, do two 1-mile workouts, the second of which should be two days before the race. Rest the day before the race, except for stretching. On race day, go out there, let your body do what you’ve trained it to do, and have fun!

 

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The woman escapes The Man, and breaks her silence. Finally. About The Man, what he did to her, and what he did to the boys. She tells the police. She tells CPS. She tells the court. Hell, she tells everyone who will listen. Speaks her truth. Fights to keep her boys safe from him forever. She breaks her silence about the mother too, and the nightmare she grew up in. She tells classes. She tells groups. She tells it at events. She faces down her fear time after time to tell the story. Before she knows it, a few isolated speaking events turn into a few hundred speeches. And a scattering of people hearing the message turn into more than 10,000 people who’ve borne witness to her truth. Twenty years have passed and the woman realizes she’s truly safe for the first time in her life. She’s stopped the cycle of pain and abuse in its fucking tracks with her words. She keeps speaking in hopes of stopping it for others.

 

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Congratulations, you’re a runner! You’ve been a runner for weeks, even well before you registered for your 5K. I bet you didn’t even notice when it happened—when you actually became a runner—did you? Becoming a runner is sneaky like that. And now, with your first 5K on the books, you have a lot of choices. You can continue doing exactly what you’ve been doing, which is 10.5 miles per week. You can begin to work on running faster, by pushing yourself harder during each run or doing shorter runs specifically for speed work. You can ramp up your distance and prepare for a longer race. It’s up to you, the sky’s the limit because YOU ARE A RUNNER!

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