Mile 1; It's a Lot Like Riding... a Horse

It’s January 26, 2010, and I ran two miles straight through for the first time on Christmas of 2009. Before then, I’d have told you, at length how much I hated running. I may have posted that very sentiment on more than one occasion on various health and fitness forums. It’s actually a very popular opinion. I’m a relatively new runner. Sure, I was out for Track in High School, but it was a small school, and they kinda had to take me. During the two years I ran for the team (didn’t start until I was a Junior) I ran a mile exactly one time. Once. And I hated every second of it.

My primary complaint? Boring. Running is boring. People who told me they ran to clear their heads were filling me with hooey, because when I ran, all I could ever think about was, “When can I stop friggin’ running?”

I sit here, nearly twenty years later, about to strap on my shoes and head out for four easy miles, knowing the only thing that kept me from finishing the eight I started yesterday was the failure to bring water. I will get that eight this weekend.

So, what’s changed in twenty years? Why did I hate running so much, and what got me past that?

I never had anything against fitness or working out. That was never it. In fact, at 35, I know for sure that I’m in the best shape of my life. A self-proclaimed workout DVD junkie, I’ve done them all. I started with Denise Austin, and when she got too easy, I moved on down the road to Jari Love and Kathe Friedrich, joined a gym, and then dropped out because the classes were not challenging enough and I was afraid of treadmills (LOL), worked my way through P90X, Hip Hop Abs, and even Insanity. All in the name of not running, because seriously, there is no point in doing all that nonspecific training just for the sake of being fit or zipping up those skinny jeans. Sure, that kind of workout can be fun, and I still resort to them when I’m in the mood to kick some ass, but I gotta say, I’m getting too old to care that much about everything and sustain that level of intensity. I probably kept it up way longer than necessary, just because I refused to run.

It’s funny-- all the various workouts I’ve done, all the looks I’ve gotten from people who insist, girls don’t DO that, don’t have MUSCLES like those, all the times I’ve had guys grab my arms and proclaim, “Look at them guns,” and running was the thing that stigmatized me. Of all things. It was the one thing I couldn’t do. I wouldn’t do. It was my can’t.

And yet? I envied runners. Never once, in all the years that I ‘hated’ running, did I spy a runner on the shoulder of the road and conspire to throw thumb tacks in his path or possibly water balloons. Never did I roll my eyes and suggest they get a real job so they could burn off some of that excess energy. Instead, I called them ‘dedicated jogger types,’ and what’s more, I sooo wanted to be one. I just didn’t know how.

But, Tracy, you say, what do you mean you didn’t know how? It’s running. All you do is put one foot in front of the other.

I know. Right? That’s what I thought, all the more reason to be constantly frustrated that I just... couldn’t.

But you know, there was a time I thought riding a horse was just sitting in a saddle and pulling on the reins. That wasn’t true about riding, and it isn’t true about running. I spent a lot of years riding horses by the seat of my pants, and let me tell you, I spent a lot of time in pain, pushing myself too hard and pushing my horses too hard, all in pursuit of the perfect ride.

And what was the perfect ride? That daydream place I went on that long school bus ride to with my knees propped up on the seat in front of me, my nose pressed against the window in hopes of catching a glimpse of every single horse on the route? When I closed my eyes and imagined the perfect ride, it was just me and the horse cantering through a field, just that, cantering through a field, making long swooping turns through the fog while the morning sun warmed the ground. (I know, the fog is tacky, but what can I say? I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.) That sounds pretty basic, though, doesn’t it? Easy.

Well, let me tell you, it isn’t. I rode a lot of horses in my pursuit of the perfect ride, and finding one that will canter in an enjoyable manner at all is a challenge. I rode ponies who trotted faster and faster until my brain was pudding and my butt was hamburger, picked up a canter for about three strides, and then went back to turning my innards to puree. I rode horses that you could squeeze and kick, cluck to and spur all day that would never shift into a canter. These horses might eventually learn to canter, but they’d usually take a whole lot of oomph to keep them going, or they’d still drop out of the canter when you changed directions, and that was only if you were lucky enough to find that their canter was actually worth riding. That’s not even mentioning all the ones that only cantered on one lead or cross-cantered. Not all canters are created equal, it would seem.

Then, there were my chosen horses, the ones who had two speeds, jig and Yee-HAWWW!

You know that kind of horse. Riding one is like being strapped to the back of a missile. The missile is careening through wind and sky and anything in its path, while you’re trailing above like a kite on a string wielding a sledgehammer in hopes that you can smack it on the nose hard enough to send it in the direction you want to go. (The missile, of course, not the horse. Disclaimer: No sledge hammers were utilized against the noses of any actual horses in the imagining or writing of this blog nor in any of the recollected thoughts that inspired it. It’s called storytelling.) Enough practice riding this kind of horse, and you end up with bulging biceps and become adept at timing your ‘influence’ so that you can, indeed, steer that horse through a barrel pattern or a pole bending course, by the seat of your velcro-equipped Levi’s, and make it look effortless. But deep down, about the place where the dowels of your spurs have carved grooves into the fuselage, you know you’re still strapped to a missile, and unless you’re an adrenaline junkie, that ain’t no fun, and it gets old real quick. Or you do. Or you die, which is always a distinct possibility.

A lot of years, a lot of horses, but you know, I eventually found that perfect ride. My gelding, Teddy, registered name Cometet, came storming out of the south pasture of the breeder’s farm on the day I went there to pick up my other gelding, Brat. I had passed on buying Teddy, because he was a few years older. It just wasn’t good horse sense to buy a 13 year old unbroke gelding when my goal was to train a horse and sell it to buy a better horse. But then Teddy came. Well, all of the horses in the south pasture came, because we didn’t get the gate closed fast enough when we brought Brat out, and excitement spread like a static charge through summer thunder heads. Most of the herd just ran really fast through the gate and then mulled around, picking at the new grass and generally getting in our way. But Teddy came out like a true prince of the desert, his head high, tail flagging, and passaging like a Grand Prix dressage horse, complete with airs above the ground. To say I’d never seen more athleticism in a horse would’ve been putting it mildly. So, of course, a couple months later, I went back and bought Teddy, too.

Teddy was my first big challenge, starting a horse completely from scratch using natural horsemanship techniques, and there was the added challenge of him being way older than your average greenie. And he was smart. No doubt smarter than I. Everything he did was a puzzle, so nothing I knew to do worked on him. But you know, I taught him to stand with no halter or bridle while I trimmed his feet. To walk backwards if I led him by the tail, to ride bridleless, sidepass over barrels and do a zig zag sideways through ground rails with me standing 22 feet away and wiggling a rope. Still, riding was a challenge. Most of the first year I had him under saddle, he’d buck for the first five minutes, refusing to canter, and then he’d canter for about three strides and bolt forward, gradually gain more and more speed until I was holding onto the front of the saddle and praying with my eyes closed that he’d eventually just wear himself out. Let me just say, to anyone who’s interested, that never works with Arabians. They can run forever.

But eventually, it happened. I asked him to canter, and he did. I asked him to canter three strides and back up, then go directly into the canter again, and he did. I asked him to change directions without using the reins, and he did. I asked him to stop without touching the reins, and he did. All the elements were there. Granted, each one took hours and hours to put there, but they were there. And one morning in December, I climbed on and... had no plans whatsoever. I couldn’t honestly think of a single thing I wanted to teach him that he didn’t already know. So, I just smooched him up into a canter, sat back, and... yeah, the perfect ride. We looped around that pasture for a good half hour or so, never breaking gait or changing speed, none of his constant head tossing or bit jangling, just me and him, cruising around, soaking up the air and some sun.

Perfect.

So, that’s all well and good, you say, but what does it have to do with running? Let me tell you.

A few years ago, I would’ve told you the perfect ride didn’t exist, that there were too many factors involved that made it too hard to achieve, and it was just a pipe dream, just like me staring after those dedicated jogger types as they ran down the shoulder of my road and wanting to be able to run along beside them was just a pipe dream. Too hard.

I was wrong about the riding. And I was wrong about running, too.

Of course, I had good reason for thinking it was too hard. Even after I spent half the summer letting Shaun T kick my ass on DVD, I still could not run a whole mile without stopping. No matter how many muscles I built or how much fat I stripped off, how much endurance I thought I had, I still couldn’t run. I still got about a quarter mile from my house and started looking for turnoffs where I could walk back and no one who saw me run out would see me walk the walk of shame. I just couldn’t run. I was just not made for running. I talked myself out of it every time. What was the point? I wasn’t even training for anything. What’s the point of running just to run?

But I still had this image in my head of what running should be. Jared Padalecki talking about running with his dogs before heading off to set. Jensen Ackles talking about jogging through Paris while on vacation. Experiences. Things that you got to do and to see only because you were out there running, things that I was missing out on because I couldn’t run.

Then it occurred to me, I achieved the perfect ride by re-evaluating and rethinking every single thing I knew about horses.

If, after all these years of putting one foot in front of the other I still couldn’t run, then I was probably DOING IT WRONG!

So, yes. I bought books. I bought DVDs. I learned about the Pose method of running. I learned about midfoot striking as opposed to heel striking. I learned about walk-run intervals. I learned about cadence. I soaked it all up. And then, I read Jack Daniels’ book, and the theory behind the long, easy run. I did some calculations, and by my numbers, I only needed to be running at a heart rate of 145 beats per minute. After spending all summer training at over 180, I knew 145 did not hurt at all. By extrapolation, then, running at 145 bpm, should not hurt at all either. And I think that was the final string tying me back, because when that baby snapped...

I remember exactly when it happened. Hubby had gotten me a heart rate monitor for Christmas, and even though I pigged out all Christmas day, by the time Christmas night rolled around, I just couldn’t help but take that monitor out on a run. I told myself it didn’t matter if I couldn’t do more than walk. All I had to do was get my heart rate up to 145.

I stepped onto the road, took a couple steps, knew they were too big, took a few smaller ones, and then, just kept going. I got to the end of the song on my .mp3 player which is where I would usually start my walk, and I just didn’t feel like walking. I kept going. I kept going past the half mile mark, kept going down the long stretch of road on the other side of the block where there are no houses or lights since the frat house burned down, and then, I was climbing back around toward my own road and decided I still wasn’t finished, took a detour down a cul de sac that turned out to be all uphill, ran all the way up the hill, turned around, came back, and when I finally did turn down my road and faced that hill that had stopped me every single time I’d tried to run it in the past, I ran all the way up that sucker and all the way to my back gate. And then I stopped, and I turned around, because there’s no point in living at the top of (arguably) the biggest hill in College Station, Texas with a direct view of the... airport, if you’re not going to stop and soak in the view. It was dark, and cold, and my .mp3 player was playing “Restless Sinner,” way too loud to have been safe. But it was perfect. Two miles of perfect.

I haven’t stopped since. I have my aches and pains, but I’m careful, and the mileage keeps going up. I haven’t yet hit the point where I just cannot keep going because I’m too tired or can’t catch my breath. I intend to keep running until I find that wall and then go through it, because something tells me on the other side is another long stretch of road waiting to take me to all those places I couldn’t go before I learned to run.

-Tracy