Does Running Make Me Weird?

“Hey, are those pajamas?”, my coworker asks as I shut the door to my office behind me. I was just about to disembark on my lunchtime run when his question stops me. I quickly glance down. For the first time, I observe that my brown Janji running shorts equipped with an array seashells and starfish do actually kind of look like boxers. Add to this scene the fact I also forgot my running shoes in my car, so I am now scurrying about the corporate floor with nothing but socks, mid-thigh shorts and a T-shirt, “Haha no,” my reply comes off rather sheepishly despite trying to instill it with as much assurance as I can muster, “these are my running shorts man”… “ah I see…well have fun”, “thanks, I will”. I reply with a grin then quickly dart down the stairs. As I bolt out the door to my car to rescue my trusty Xeroshoes from their trunk imprisonment, I begin ruminating about my lunchtime excursions. Almost every day, around the same time, noonish or so, I like to unplug from my desk then get outside to visit whatever stretch of backstreet or trail I can find within a few miles’ radius of my downtown office. As I begin slipping into my running shoes a thought occurs to me, “Does running make me weird?”.

As someone who is an analytical person, I spend the next half hour debating my case, “What does “weird” really mean anyway?”.  According to the ole Webster, someone who is weird is someone “of strange or extraordinary character”. I suppose I could be kind of strange in my own way but extraordinary, nah. I am just someone who enjoys running for what it is, a simple test of willpower. To place one foot in front of the other for the sheer purpose of just doing it because it makes me feel better.

I suppose this concept on its own can make someone think I am a bit weird. Running oftentimes hurts and to subject oneself to such abuse can be its own sort of self-inflicted flagellation. However, it’s not all bad. As a runner, especially one who loves to run outside I get the pleasure observing firsthand the dazzling effects of the change of the seasons. Winter brings along its own palette of scents and colors. Out on the road or trail the thin cold air of winter seems to hold smells in place, often when running I am bombarded with the smell of oaky chimney smoke, deep whiffs of decaying leaves, and of course observe the fog of my breath as I appear to be chain smoking my way to the next mile marker. All these things are amidst a backdrop of light ambers, ruddy browns, deep greens, and of course all manner of stark-naked trees. In the spring, these things give way to fanciful effervescent spring flowers, rich aromatic pollen, and budding leaves which blanket every bush, sapling, and branch in a satisfying emerald coat.

As a runner, maybe I also tend to notice things that other people don’t. For example, I know that my office staircase features 22 steps which, depending on if I just ran a long run over the weekend, can be a great pick me up workout during the day or my worst enemy. I also know that the nearest park in either direction of me is 1.77 miles north or 1.1 miles south. I get a kick out of examining other people’s running shoes. I like to pretend I can tell a lot about someone from what shoes they choose to wear, like a palm reader telling fortunes. Clean running shoes may mean someone either doesn’t run that much, keeps to the roads, or just likes clean shoes while shoes covered in stains and caked in mud (my kind of shoe) may mean that someone likes to hit the trails and doesn’t mind getting dirty.

It might be fair to say that running can consume a lot of my everyday thoughts, as I drive around various places and see a hill or a forest, I think to myself “wow, that would be fun to run up” or “how does one get into this place?”. I also once booked a three-day family trip to the mountains as an excuse to hit up some of the best trails on the lower slopes of the southern Appalachians.

I’ve lost track of the number of times that I have been shouted at by people who say, “run Forest run!”. Whether they mean this as compliment or an insult I’m not quite sure but I take it as a compliment and keep on moving. I know virtually every trail and sidewalk for miles, where the nearest public restroom is at all times, can tell you where the cracks on the pavement make for dangerous tripping hazards, where there is fresh roadkill and how to avoid the smell based on the direction of the wind, which dogs are fenced in and which dogs will give chase, where the friendly neighbors are – the ones who will smile and wave as opposed to the ones who will scowl and track your movement across their front porch view like an owl’s head on swivel, how healthy the deer population is, where you are likely to run into a snake on its afternoon sunbathing slither, and of course a constant in no matter what town, city, or country that I run in – I can give you an estimation of just how “high” the population might be. 

Sometimes a good day or a bad one is decided by getting a good GPS signal, a random red or green light through town, or by either remembering or forgetting my shoes at home, and don’t even get me started on Daylight Savings Time. Throughout the course of my life I’ve lost a few toenails, been so sore I could barely move, and managed to run at just about any time of day from the crack of dawn to the pitch black of night with only a lone headlight to see me through. I’ve also managed to run in some of the most amazing places, in frigid fields of snow in Ohio to the abhorrent heat of central Florida’s Withlacoochee Forest, amidst the rim of the Grand Canyon, along the coastal seas of Hawaii, throughout the eternal city of Rome, along the Val di Chiana Valley in Italy, inside downtown underbelly of tropical Nassau, up to the summit of Kennesaw Mountain, along the Smith Creek Trail in Georgia, through the depths of Cloudland Canyon, the peak of Rabun Bald, among the bustling streets of Barbados’, and the historic heart of Louisville just to name a few.

No matter the place, the time, or the weather if the occasion lends itself to it, I will get outside and run. If that makes me a bit weird, so be it.