Running Is for Those Who Can

Running Is for Those Who Can

I am not a runner. I know people who run, like Gerald Miller. He’s a longtime family friend and has likely logged more miles than the collective drivers of NASCAR. Gerald was featured in a NIKE ad. A photograph taken at the end of a marathon showed him peeling a pair of strategically placed Band-Aids from his sweaty chest. He was smiling.

Charles and Audrey Jackson run. They are fit and happy. They extol the virtues of running, and my eyes glaze over. I have soggy joints and a bad history with running. My physical education instructor in college can vouch for that.

When I was a freshman, I enrolled in Sissy Beacham’s Fitness and Conditioning class at what was then the Jefferson Davis Campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. My dad taught there. Sissy and he were good friends, so it was with great trepidation that I entered her class that first day, all lumpy and out of shape. I knew that my progress would be monitored with particular interest.

Our class included students of varying degrees of fitness. Some were runners. It was the era of Jane Fonda and videotaped aerobics. Many of the females showed up in cute pink tights and leg warmers, bouncy ponytails and lip-gloss. I dressed out in an old tee shirt and sweats. To my credit, I was eager to tone my muscles and burn fat, boost my metabolism and eat properly. As soon as Miss Beacham got out the calipers, though, my eagerness turned to flat out despondency.

She pinched the fat on our stomachs, our underarms, and our thighs. She measured our unhealthy indiscretions with a wicked device that revealed to the tenth of an inch the blubber we carried on our fleshy carcasses. She calculated our BMI, a ratio of weight to height used to determine your level of fitness. Oh, the inhumanity of it all! If I could have run fast, I would have bolted right then and there.

But I stuck with the program. We worked out on the stage of the gymnasium, following Miss Beacham’s lead while we lifted legs and crunched our abs and stifled moans of agony. I started walking every day, the one exercise that has never failed me. I lost weight and I felt better. There was a problem. To complete the course we had to run. Did I mention I am not a runner?

At the end of the semester, I took Miss Beacham’s timer with me, the kind you see sports officials use at the track. I had to run a mile, record the time it took me to complete it, and report to Miss Beacham.

Out on the lonely road, dodging cars and a serious need to collapse, I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I called up every incentive I could muster to will my legs onward. The Little Engine That Could cheered me on. The thrill of the fabled “runner’s high” taunted me. Finally, I rounded the corner for the home stretch and finished that fearsome mile with a final click of the timer.

Miss Beacham was sitting behind her desk when I delivered the news. I’d like to think someone had just told her the joke of the year, something that would make her laugh like a chimpanzee on a truckload of bananas. But it was the timer.

“What’d you do? Crawl?” she cackled in her distinctive Southern drawl. Because I know her to be a kind and wonderful woman, because she is a perfectly sound and knowledgeable expert on fitness and health, and because I know I stink as a runner, I laughed, too.

Since then, my seasons of running have been limited to those times when I reflect on my belief that the best reason to run is because you can. I think about those who wish they could walk, run, even crawl a mile, and I feel the need to pick up the pace. Sometimes, I even smile.