Running Fast; Realizing Why
How stoplights made me the runner I am
New York winter days close up shop at 4:30, and that there are no park runs after dark. To run in the wintertime city, it was either trudge it out on a treadmill, which I would not do, or run in the streets, which is dangerous. So to make it less dangerous, when I was in college Les and I would go together. She and I would run down Amsterdam to 110th st, down Central Park West, through Columbus Circle, through the Theater District, straight through Times Square, and all the way to 14th St, which is a little less than 6 miles. When we hit 14th and 7th, we took the 2-3 to the 1 trains back to campus.
And that’s my relationship with mileage; it’s not high, but it is fast. Les’ and I ran sub-36 minutes on that route for one solid semester, in snow, through traffic, with Les only stopping her watch when we were held up by a major red light. I never learned to do high mileage; I’ve always been a fast, middle distance runner, which has held me back from gaining a lot of running relationships in my adult life. Most people want to run farther, but I never have.
This week, running in Manhattan, I discovered one reason why that mileage kept working for me through my 20s and 30s: New York City streetlights. The blocks on the UWS are about 1/20th of a mile. That’s…really short. You eat them up pretty fast. Add to that the motivation of crosswalk signals counting down the seconds before the light changes and you’d have to stop, and what you end up with is a continuously increasing run pace for as long as you can keep beating the lights. And that’s how I learned to run as an adult: fast, with lots of red-and-white blinking milestones along the way.
Running in that environment means you keep running fast long after you stop racing regularly. You keep up your lateral and agility strength training as well, but not by going to the gym; by dodging people and dogs and garbage and sidewalk openings. To flow through the crowds, you have to jump from side to side across the wide sidewalks; you almost dance. The energy of the city flows into you with the rapidity of the blocks passing underneath you and the neighborhoods change in an ecstatic whirlwind on either side.
Mid-run, you might have only gone 2 miles but it was the fastest 2 miles in the whole world and you absorbed it all, dripping sweat and hurdling through intersections until a light went red on you and there’s no choice except to skid to a stop and seek out the nearest shining, green-and-white street sign. Focusing on it, wiping the sweat from your eyes, you know it’s just a number that’s part of a grid that’s the skeleton of a centuries-old splotch of heaving, breathing, human existence. It tells everyone on that street corner the same thing for every moment of every day since it was ever hung there. It’s just a number in a grid, but it’s your milestone, your companion. It tells you that you’re on XX street, and that you’ve got 10 or 20 or 30 more blocks to go.
I have a couple more New York runs to go before we head back to California, and I hope to be able to translate into words the insights and romance of them. Where ever you’re running this week or this month, I hope you love it. For today, remember: go run.