Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving, it is traditional to pause and reflect on the people and things in life for which we are grateful. I have much for which to give thanks: a child I love beyond expression, a family that is large and close, friends who are far kinder and more wonderful than I deserve, and a future that gives me the opportunity to live my dream. But that’s boring. So instead, I’m going to talk about something for which I have surprising, overwhelming gratitude: the gift of running.

I am not a natural runner. In high school, Coach Click, the gym teacher, made us all run a mile once. That was four times around our high school track. We were supposed to run it all, but I got a quarter way around the track and thought I was going to die. And I’m not talking figuratively die, I mean literally. My face looked like a tomato, my heart was beating erratically, I was getting that fuzzy feeling that means that passing out is just around the corner, and my legs did not want to go. While Coach Click made all the fat kids and whiners keep going, he took one look at me and said, “Get inside.” That was the end of my high school running career.

I didn’t even think about running again until my son reached 7th grade and proclaimed that he was going out for the cross-country team. By this point, I was a devoted half-a-pack-a-day smoker, so the thought of running down the block, much less the two miles that comprise a middle-school course, was ridiculous. Nevertheless, the boy and I went to Frontrunner, our local running store, to get him a pair of running shoes. And that was where the first part of the running gift was given to me.

Despite the fact that we were getting shoes for my son, the workers at Frontrunner, who are devoted runners themselves, asked me, “Does he get his interest in running from you? Are you a runner?” I didn’t want to tell them that I was more of a smoke-cigarettes-and-sit-on-the-couch kind of girl, so I just said, “Oh, no. I can’t run.”

Well….those words must be some sort of emergency signal to the Frontrunner faithful, because within twenty seconds, I was surrounded by no fewer than four associates. In my memory, it was more like twenty, but I think four is correct. They all sat in a circle around me, and started the hard push. “ANYONE can run,” they said gently. “It’s very relaxing.” “We have a starter sheet for you. It’s called ‘run 30 minutes in 30 days.’” “Think of all the friends you’ll make.” And then the worst, “You can do it. We believe in you.”

Now, to my extreme sadness, no one had ever tried to indoctrinate me into a cult before this point (What, Moonies, was I not good enough for you?), but I knew the signs when I saw them. Calm smiles. Gentle voices. Lots of reassurances. Head nods. They practically promised to call me every morning and meet me for a run themselves. I knew that running and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms, but these people insisted that running, in fact, wanted to speak to me and be my friend if only I would give it another shot. No thanks. I let them press the beginners running schedule into my hands, but otherwise made only vague commitments and scrammed out of there as soon as I’d purchased the first of many pairs of giant, clown-sized running shoes for my son.

Less than two years later, I quit smoking, and knew that I needed to exercise to keep my mind off of the cancer sticks. And for some reason, I’d kept that running schedule for beginners clipped to my fridge the whole time. My friend Angela was a marathon runner, and she made it sound like she thought I could do it. So I started. Slowly, and poorly, but I started.

A little over a year later, I ran my first race with Angela – a four miler in the woods, where old men pushing baby strollers filled with bricks passed me, where children running in flip-flops passed me, and where, humiliatingly, a blind, epileptic dog with three legs passed me in the third mile, promptly had a seizure in front of me, and still managed to come in ahead. But I didn’t care – I had run four miles!

Since that time, I have run with friends, co-workers, strangers and my son (who thinks it’s really funny to show me that my running pace is his fast walking pace. Ha, ha, Jude. You’re fucking hilarious.) But most of all, I have run with my friend Angela, who always creates routes with good bathroom access, who rarely complains when every route I devise takes us through crack neighborhoods with no bathrooms, who can spend an entire mile telling me all about the show Mad Men, just to keep me distracted, who is not afraid of hills, who can Parkour anything in her path, and who has an endless supply of interesting conversation for the road. I am so lucky to have her as a running partner and friend.

And so, this Thanksgiving, I will run the annual Turkey Trot, a five miler with a deceptive uphill stretch at the end, where last year, I was passed by someone dressed as a giant port-a-potty. And I will run it with gratitude and thanks to the zealots at Frontrunner, who gave me the first step in this process, to all of the runners who gave me words of advice and encouragement when I was training for my first half-marathon, to each and every person I’ve gone on a run with – I remember every run I’ve taken with a friend – and to my favorite running partner, Angela, for helping me keep this gift alive, even when I’m injured, or stressed, or just too tired to go. Running is a gift that fantastic people have given to me, and I am more thankful than I can ever say.