The Next Obsession

It is still dark out. The emerging dawn just a promise on the eastern horizon. A smear of dim orange crowned by purple clouds. The beach path is empty. I own it for now. . . others, I'm sure, will be joining me soon. The landscape steadily moves around me - shifting one stride toward me and then behind me each time my foot hits the packed sand. The ocean is useless to gauge myself by - too vast and featureless. The fence posts that line the path are pacing my immediate movement. The line of condominiums, like giant sentinels keeping watch on the lapping ocean, slide by easily, marking my larger progress. I'm warming up. My body humming. My legs and knees and feet feel each impact, sending a slight shock through my gut, torso, head and out through the bobbing hairs on my head. My lungs and heart are ramping up, increasing the flow of oxygen and blood coursing through my body.

I never really enjoyed this until recently. I never though of running as a sport but as a way to train and prepare for a real sport. A means to an end - not an end in and of itself. I've occasionally gone running along the beach during the years we have lived here and occasionally I've enjoyed it. I've never done it with any real frequency and consistency though. In September that changed. . .  a little.

I've reached North Shore Open Space Park - the sand is softer here along the path. Each step must be careful and deliberate. On the southern end of the park is a large mound of sand. Perhaps brought in at one time as a store to quell potential beach erosion - not sure, but it has been here for years. The growing vines from the adjacent dunes have spilled over onto the base of this sand mound climbing half-way up its slopes. The incline is mushy and I have to widen my stance as I pound up the hill. The hill levels out for about twenty feet - giving me a brief view of the beach and ocean and park from a slight elevation - a treasure in a landscape as flat as Miami's.

In late August after stepping off the bathroom scale I came to the realization that my relaxed attitude regarding my health and my weight would need to change. Either my metabolism was slowing or I was unknowingly increasing my caloric intake. Either way I had reached a new high that just kept on creeping up. I decided to stop and lose 20 pounds before the year's end. Again running became a means to an end - a necessary part of the equation - something I did to burn calories. Not something I did just for fun and adventure. My left knee would often hurt. I was winded and sore before I reached a mile. My pace was slow and I ended up walking more than jogging. Other runners would breeze past me at these paces I thought I would never attain. And so running fell to the bottom of my preferred exercise list, replaced almost entirely by biking and the aerobic videos in my Netflix queue.

South of the park there is a paved pathway that snakes along the beach for about 15 blocks. More and more people begin to emerge. It is lighter out now. The light blue of the sky all but dimming the waning crescent moon and the brilliant dot of Venus in the east. There are the homeless of North Beach strolling not far from the littered underbrush where they sleep, there are a few people out on the beach watching the sunrise, lovers loitering on the romantic deck of a Lifeguard stand, I wonder how many of them have been out all night celebrating the New Year - finishing the night by watching the sunrise over the Atlantic. Then there are those of us walking and jogging along the path. Are their efforts on this morning compelled by the nature and meaning of this day? How many of them will still be here next Saturday morning and the week after that and the week after that?

At some point I went from an occasional run back in September and October to a week such as this past one. Since Monday I have gone running four times and logged about 20 miles. I stopped to think about it a week or two ago: When did I start liking running? I traced it back and realized the day was Thanksgiving. On that morning I woke before the rest of the family and crept out of the Sails Resort Motel in North Redington Beach on the west coast of Florida. The morning was strikingly beautiful, the flat smooth beach with the water at low tide created the ideal running surface right along the ocean's edge. Maybe it was the exploration I enjoyed - when I passed the fishing pier I realized that I was entering foreign territory. I had never been along this stretch of sand before. Well into the run I realized that my pace had quickened. My knee wasn't hurting. I wasn't getting winded and felt I could continue at the same pace for a while still. At this point I had lost about 15 pounds - my load was lighter and my legs, heart and lungs were stronger. I picked out a distant landmark to reach before turning back and revisiting the entire landscape in reverse. On the way back with my face to the recently risen sun, the music in my headphones thumping out the beat to which I ran, I picked up my pace and felt an exhilaration I hadn't previously known.

When I reached my target weight just before Christmas I was elated, but I was also a little bit lost. I had focused so much on this goal (often to the point of obsession) for the previous three and a half months, that I was unsure of what I would do next. I had become so accustomed to logging my calories and recording my exercise - would I need to continue? Should I try to loose a few more pounds? It took a few days for me to realize that my next goal should not be weight-based, it should be to improve and develop something I was really beginning to enjoy. The goal became to make running my next obsession. Running would now be the sport. Running would be the end. Good health and maintaining an ideal weight - mere ancillary benefits.