I have achieved my life’s long dream. No, that’s not exactly true. My life’s long dream is to hike mountains all day long. Or to invent hip extenders, so pants sit on my waist better. Or to not have permanently stuffed-up sinuses.
Yeah. I go big!
So, if not my dream, I have achieved one of my long-simmering goals. Aspirations. White whales. Something I have been trying to achieve since pretty much the fall of the Roman empire. Always to fail. Always to come up short. Always to lose interest and try to come up with that hip extender thing.
But I have finally done it. I have become … a morning runner.
Because for most of my life I’ve been an afternoon runner. One of those people who comes home from work tired and thinks the idea of going for a run is second only to having a tree sloth clip your ingrown toenails. It’s also the time of day when the fridge calls to you and says in a sing-song fashion, “You know, I’ve got cold beer.” And you think, “Who needs willpower, good health or to be in shape? My shape is awesome. I’m kind of bulge-ie and pear-shaped. Like a modernist painting of a sack of potatoes! LET’S DRINK BEER!!!”
I always dreamed of transitioning to morning runs. When the beer is less tempting, the temperatures don’t threaten to melt the clothes off your back and you can start your day totally exhausted and wanting to go back to bed. Doesn’t that sound refreshing?
But I could never manage it. To overcome the need to hit the snooze button 50 or 60,000 times. The way the pillow seemed to whisper sweet nothings into my ear: “You are a really awesome-looking, pear-shaped man. Stay here with me.” How the idea of running in the morning sounded really good in the evening – when you were drinking beer – and a lot more like a tree sloth fixing your toenails when it was time to do it.
Then I read an article that changed it all. It said the best way to begin something new like running is to add it to your morning regimen. You know, build it into your daily routine. For instance, if every morning around 5:15 a.m. one of your animals wakes you up, and you commence yelling at the animal and calling it a “cursed, mangey scourge” before feeding it and making coffee and wondering if you dropped the animal off on a country road, would it get eaten by a badger? Well, then just make your next step to go running.
And if you do that same routine for a couple of weeks … Voila! You’re a morning runner … partly thanks to your mangey animal, which you’re now glad you didn’t feed to the country badger.
Only, dreams and better health aside, I’m finding there are some drawbacks to morning running. Like how it’s really dark outside. I mean like SCARY dark. Scare-the-pee-out-of-you dark. Shadows creeping all around you. Weird animals that could be Chupacabras – or badgers – everywhere. And potholes!
At my advanced age, I have the night vision of a blind cave gecko. The kind that don’t even bother to have eyes. I run around with two hands extended in front of me hoping I don’t crash into a tree or run into the road.
Most of the time I can’t see 3 feet in front of me. Other runners suddenly emerge out of the darkness like phantoms. They can’t see either, so we crash into each other. “Sorry,” I tell them. “I’m just a morning-running cave gecko.”
“Me, too,” they say. “Watch out ahead. I saw a Chupacabra!”
I stumble over curbs. I misjudge and tumble over things that were never an issue during the daytime. And I misstep so awkwardly into the dips of unlevel sidewalks that I fear I’ve hyperextended an entire side of my body. Plus, several teeth have rattled loose.
When it’s all over, I’m so mentally and psychologically drained that I curl up on the back porch and sob hysterically. “Why did I do this to myself!?!”
But then the other morning, walking back up my street as the sun started peaking over the trees, I glimpsed up to see wings as wide as the street. It swooped low. An owl. It landed on top of a power pole. I stopped to watch it. No sooner than I did, another one landed beside it. They stood perched face-to-face, softly cooing at each other. Like a private conversation. “How was your night? How do you think the stock market is gonna’ hold up? Did you see the Chupacabra?”
It wasn’t so scary anymore. Suddenly, it all seemed worth it. The potholes. The hyperextended left side of my body. The scary truck that almost ran me over. All of it. The gift of finally being a morning runner. I realized how lucky I was. To see this. To experience it. To be alive.
Then the cat came over and demanded second breakfast, and it was back to my regular morning routine. (I wonder where the nearest country road is, anyway.)