I couldn’t really see during one of the most interesting runs of my life.
This was on a rural road near Mt. Rainier in Washington. The overcast, moonless sky provided no illumination, and there were no roadside buildings shedding light pollution. I minced tentatively for the first few minutes until my eyes adjusted enough to reliably place me in the center of the road. Then I settled in and savored moving through space with no visual cues.
The only breaks in the blackness were the few times an approaching vehicle’s lights rose far in the distance and then sped past. From my temporary spot on the other side of the road I imagined myself as the driver, thinking, “Why the hell is that person out in the middle of nowhere at 4:30 in the morning?”
The answer: It was the only time to run that day before flying home to Maine. My reward was a singular experience and the satisfaction that, 45 years into being a runner, I had still never missed a day because of travel logistics.
I don’t recall initially setting this goal. Early run-on-travel-days motivation stemmed from when I was chasing PRs. It seemed illogical to think it was okay to not run because of an unusual schedule when I would have otherwise trained that day. I would recall getting up at 3:30 one morning in 11th grade to run before my one attempt at downhill skiing and think, “If I could do that then, I can find a way today.”
As work and other trips became more frequent, I had a larger ledger of success stories to draw from. Eventually, I realized the training justification had waned and that I simply liked the idea that I’m the sort of person who doesn’t get easily derailed. Plus, now I have fun stories and wonderful memories of doing things like running past double-taking tuk-tuk drivers in New Delhi at midnight, or toward the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska, at 4 a.m., or in a Heathrow Airport concourse during a brief layover en route to Kenya. (“For the next 20 minutes, I don’t know you,” my wife said.)
To be clear, I’m talking here only about running on the “to” and “from” days of trips. Running once on site is a given. If you view running while on vacation as a chore rather than an opportunity to explore, we’re probably not soulmates. As for work and other obligatory trips, I can’t be the only one who runs more than usual in these situations to counter others having too much claim on my time.
Always running on travel days is an admittedly arbitrary goal. But that could be said of almost every standard we hold ourselves to. And this particular goal is really just a more extreme example of how any dedicated runner operates. As a benignly indifferent universe regularly erects obstacles, we plot and plan, anticipate and navigate, all in service of answering, “When can I get in my miles?”
My travel companions that morning in Washington thought I was a masochist when, in answer to their questions, I said yes, I had gotten in a run. I omitted what I really wanted to say: That if it turns out I’m tired from getting up 90 minutes earlier than they did, so what? I’m about to spend the next 12 hours sitting in a car, plane, airport, or bus. Why not get out and live a little before an otherwise dreary day? My only regret was that I hadn’t given myself time for a longer run.
