Prospect Park

The route is neutral; you are not.

Prospect Park From 3 Different Angles. 2026.

I have always believed in trying something out if you really care about it and this is the reason I tried out Prospect Park as a run route for two separate terms in my life.

These runs were adjacent to or perhaps part of my trying to make happy the men I was trying out during those periods. They wanted a Brooklyn wifey, someone who had interests but not passions, was good at things but not too good at them, and who would fall asleep when she got married and maybe wake up 5 years later wondering who she was and what had happened. I thought maybe I could do that.

As a result I have a long-standing and irrational grievance towards a perfectly good 3.36 mile tree-shaded loop inside one of the world’s most beautiful city parks. I cannot approach this loop without being reminded of when my approach was preceded by my having run from apartments where, for some reason, the men who inhabited them with me begrudged my going to run despite knowing that I did so long before we shared a front door.

I can’t feel the inward-toward-the-Great-Meadow-slope of the first part of this loop without irritation at its insistence I go counterclockwise around it. Somewhere in my body, this slope always triggers a pain: my left ankle, my right hip, my shoulders, tense in their trying to counter the leftward lean of my body.

In those far-away years, I blamed the route for not enjoying those runs. It was damp and gray in the park. It was boring to run on wide roads with hundreds of other runners doing what we were supposed to be doing in our counterclockwise runs to improve our health and dutifully enjoy the open space that past generations labored to give us. The constant smell of grilling, even in the winter, irritated me. The confinement of safety irritated me.

I thought for a while that I was done with running. That it was a chore, a habit, and I had outgrown it.

But of course that was not at all what was happening. What I resented and reacted to were the restricted expectations on my behavior, on my timing, and on my knowledge of what I could do. Running’s familiarity threw into relief the irrationality of how I was living.

The space running created surfaced pain and irritation. Every annoying expectation of the Prospect Park loop had nothing to do with the route but everything to do with what I was doing to myself.

Alone, with nothing but your mind and body, the trueness of the life you’re leading comes into focus. The pain in your body could of course be muscular or skeletal, but I’ve found that those pains can also be the voice of your mind telling you this is right or this is not right. Just as there is good pain and bad pain in running, there are good, true lives for you to lead and those that are not good and not true. Alone in your run, it is hard to lie to yourself. The route is neutral, but you are not. Go run.

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