Running with a Police Escort

by Jill Grunenwald

  But for all the things that separated me from my peer group growing up, there was one thing that brought us all together. Something that crossed socioeconomic backgrounds, grade point averages, and extracurricular activities: a strong desire to leave our hometown.

  It must be a Northeast Ohio thing ‘cause, I mean, look at LeBron James. Granted, he took a more … dramatic exit than most, leaving in flames (quite literally, the fumes from burning jerseys following him all the way to Miami). But, y’know, he just had some shit he had to work out. Like most twentysomethings. As adolescents, we think we know everything, we think we know better, and we think we’ll find greener grass on the other side of the Ohio borders. At sixteen, my main motivator in life was to get out of Ohio, although I would have settled for just getting out of Hudson, which I did when I went away to college.

  After receiving my BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University, I returned to Hudson and once again made it my goal to get out of Ohio. This time I was successful and moved to Kentucky for a period of time that included graduate school.

  See, I’m kind of like LeBron. I moved south, played in the grown-up leagues for a while, then graduated and after graduating I looked around and realized something was missing. I made my pilgrimage back to Northeast Ohio, only this time settling in the big city of Cleveland, and I quickly made a life for myself that includes occasional visits to my hometown, where my parents still live.

  I was raised in upper middle class white suburbia, although I grew up on the South Side of town, not on the North where all of the ritzy McMansions can be found. It’s a city steeped in a rich history, dating back to its 1799 founding. Imagine, if you will, that some eighteenth century wizard figured out how to take a quaint, picturesque New England hamlet and just lift the entire thing and plop it down in the northeast corner of Ohio. Because that’s pretty much what happened, minus the whole wizard part. Driving through Hudson is like driving through a Norman Rockwell painting.

  When I was in high school, while there was small track in the backfields where we ran the mile every year, the school did not have a proper football stadium. But in 2009, the city decided it was time the varsity football team had a proper football stadium on the school’s property. Three years later, the city broke ground on the $5.5 million project, which was completely funded by the community and private donations. The stadium was ready and open to the public just a few months later in August 2012, just in time for football season. The large complex includes all-weather turf with seating for 5,000 and a track.

  This was a momentous occasion for Hudson, and to celebrate the grand opening of the brand-new stadium, several events were scheduled across the city, one of which was a 5K.

  The Veteran’s Memorial 5K, my third race, weighed more heavily on me than the previous two combined because the race both began and ended inside the stadium. That meant that this alumni, the one who used to walk the mile every year, was going to be running on the new high school track.

  In the weeks leading up to the race I was balancing carefully between excitement and anxiety, all while still trying to contend with running in the heat.

  As a runner, it’s so natural to want to let pace be a defining data point. It’s quantifiable, like a number on a scale. It’s something that can be tracked and examined over time. When it comes to running, there are very few things that can be monitored in that same manner. Therefore, speed is what comparatively defines runners.

  So what does it mean for a runner who is already slow that external forces, like heat and humidity, are slowing her down even more? I can’t control the weather (sadly) and I certainly can’t control the temperature, but both of these things were causing me to not run at what I would consider my best.

  Before the Running with a Mission 5K back in June, I let this get under my skin. I let myself, and my identity as a runner, be defined by a set of numbers. A “good” pace left me feeling elated, while a “bad” pace left me feeling like a failure.

  It all was arbitrary, of course. Good and bad don’t have any real set definition and one runner’s “bad” run is another runner’s “good.” This can be especially true as a back-of-the-pack runner when confronted with other runners complaining about running a 12- or 13-minute mile and thinking I’d trade all of my finisher’s medals to run that.

  (Okay, well, I wouldn’t really trade away all of my finisher’s medals, but you get the point.)

  But since it’s arbitrary, that also means it’s all subjective. So, yes, a faster runner’s bad pace is my good pace (and, vice versa, my bad pace is someone else’s no good, horrible, very rotten bad pace). We are all running our own races with our own goals and finish lines, whether that’s the finish line on the ground or one created in our mind.

  Which is why, in the weeks leading up to the Veteran’s Memorial 5K, I just stopped worrying about my pace.

  Unless a runner is qualifying for the Boston Marathon and chasing that BQT (Boston Qualifying Time, for you running nubes), in the big old grand scheme of things, speed and pace has no real meaning. Oh sure, it was a good idea for me to have goals, and there was nothing wrong if one of those goals was simply to be faster than my last race, but I decided that I no longer was going to let that finish time determine my sense of self or worth as a runner.

  Especially not in summer when I can only put so much effort into it before forces way beyond my control have their way with me. All the training and planning in the world can’t save a runner when Mother Nature decides to exert some of her power, reminding us all who is really in control on race day.

  Nope, when it came to racing I was just going to run, and let the timing chips fall where they may.

  Granted, I was a brand-new runner and a slow one at that, so it’s entirely possible I had no idea what the hell I was talking about. But I was also a runner who fully embraced last place at her first race so I also like to believe I’m runner-wise beyond my years.

  The Veteran’s Memorial 5K was an early Saturday morning race at the end of August 2012. Since my parents still live in my hometown, I drove to their house the Friday before and spent the night there. The next day I was up early, as was my mom, who has always been an early riser.

  Over the past few months I had gotten into a bit of a routine when it came to my pre-race fueling, so I had come to my parents’ house prepared with some hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, and a small bagel. Even though I knew there was a chance I’d be able to find most of the same food in my parents’ house, I didn’t want to take that risk of needing to eat something new right before this race. I was already feeling ridiculously nervous about this race, no need to add more stress by changing up my dietary habits. Runners have a lot of … not superstitions per se, but routines and quirks that come out around race day, and food is always a big one. From what we eat the night before to the fuel we use during a race and, yes, even the meal right before a run. Much of it, for me at least, is trial and error. But once an optimal food has been found, even if it’s all psychological, it’s difficult to break a runner from that habit, hence the need to bring my own breakfast.

  With plenty of time to spare, I changed into my running clothes, kissed my mom goodbye, and headed to the high school. My dad was still asleep, but I knew they’d eventually be meeting me at the school.

  I parked my car in the lot designated for seniors during the school year and walked over to the new stadium. It was massive, far more state-of-the-art than the stadium I used to play my flute in fifteen years before. The high school, and thus the stadium, is in the middle of a residential area of town and surrounded by a lot of woods. This is the suburbs of Ohio, so there is not much else out there and certainly not any buildings higher than two stories. Light pollution is very limited and the nearby woods create a dense field of darkness all around. This means that when the team is playing at home, those stadium lights can be seen for miles, like a collection of brightly burning suns blazing high above the school.

  (The team is tale
nted and has made it to the state play-offs several seasons in a row. We’re good, but Ohio isn’t exactly Texas country. You wouldn’t know that, though, driving towards that stadium on game night. It’s like Friday Night Lights out there, which I’m pretty sure is exactly the same thing I said the first time I attended a game at the varsity team’s new home.)

  After picking up my packet, I pinned my bib to my shirt and found a spot along the track fence and just stood there, taking in the atmosphere and magnitude of the new stadium. I get that for most people, even maybe most runners, this didn’t seem like that big of a deal. It’s not like this was my first race nor was it a big-name race in a fancy destination location. I hadn’t spent weeks training, and I wasn’t tackling a new distance. This was just some little 5K in some little town in Ohio.

  But it was my little town. A little town I had spent most of my childhood and a good chunk of my adult life running away from. Here, today, I was still running, but this time I was running in a completely different context and for a completely different reason. I wasn’t running away from Hudson or away from the miserable mile from my past; I was running towards my bright and bold future as a runner. I was carving a new path, a new set of miles. I was a new Jill. It was redemption time, baby.

  As I waited for my parents to arrive, I leaned against the fence that ran the perimeter of the football field. Other runners were starting to arrive, clustering into small groups on and off the field. I surveyed the wandering crowd, looking for any familiar faces. Not that I really anticipated knowing anyone, but there was always that chance in a small town. Music pumped into my ears from my iPod.

  As any harrier will tell you, music for a runner is a very personal choice. Some run with, some without. I find I have to run with music and I keep a carefully curated collection of songs available for when I workout. As I stood there, gazing up at the bright blue sky, the familiar opening beats of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” came on and I grinned. As a teenager, the only thing resembling any sort of athletic endeavor I voluntarily put myself through was marching band. Black Sabbath’s iconic rock song was the opening number to the first show my freshman classmates and I ever did on that field, a performance we recreated as upperclassmen four years later for the annual Senior Show. Having that song, of all songs, come across the wires, pulled from the depths of thousands of musical options, seemed like a sign from Hermes, the Greek god of Running—I was about to rock (and roll) the hell out of this race.

  The course started on the new track, at the heart of the Veteran’s Memorial Stadium. While I was waiting for the race to start, a small crowd of spectators had gathered in the stands, my parents included. The stadium stands were so brand-new, the metallic material was blinding as the August sun bounced off them.

  When there were only a few minutes left until the start of the race, we all started to find our places on the track. It wasn’t a very big race, with just a few dozen runners, but a healthy mix of adults as well as middle school– and high school–aged kids as well. With the high school as the backdrop to the waiting runners, I found my way to the back of the small crowd.

  The gun went off and the spectators in the stands started to loudly cheer us on as we all picked up our feet and started towards the back end of the stadium. The course began with a few yards on the track before exiting out the back end of the perimeter fence to a small trail located behind the high school. A trail I hadn’t seen or thought about in over ten years but still, a trail I knew I had been on before as it was part of the conditioning running course our gym teachers would take us on in the days leading up to the Annual Mile. Less than a quarter of a mile in and already, nostalgia was taking hold.

  The trail took me away from the school, along the far boundary of the high school’s campus. Here, I ran against the large expansive green grass at the back end of the school, the baseball and soccer fields to my right. At the end of the trail, the course turned out onto Hudson-Aurora Road, one of the major streets in the community.

  Next, after passing beneath the Ohio Turnpike overpass, I ran along the sidewalks of the bustling Hudson-Aurora Road. After a quarter of a mile or so, the course turned left onto the Turnpike Trail for the next mile and a half of the race.

  Up until this point, all of my miles had been logged within the confines of a major metropolitan area. These were city miles. Even my beloved Edgewater Park is all open air. Here I was in a dense forest, lush and just so very green. So many shades flitted within the peripherals of my vision, the sun cutting bright rays through the available gaps in the canopy high above. Trail running was new to me, (although this really was more of a paved walkway in the middle of a narrow strip of land, heavily populated with tall trees). Because of the trees, I had to be a little more aware of my footing and keep my eyes on the ground for fear that I’d trip over a branch and break my ankle (something that would be quite par for the course given my clumsy sprains), but other than that I felt oddly liberated. Somehow, being enclosed like that by the trees added an element of freedom I hadn’t anticipated. And it was just so quiet. No noisy cars from the streets or people all around. The only thing I heard was the natural rustle of leaves in the light breeze and critters who lived there.

  After a mile and a half, Turnpike Trail dead-ends into Stow Road and the course turned to the right to run a few yards along it. By this point in the race the crowd had thinned out enough that I hadn’t seen another runner ahead or behind me for what felt like hours (although, in reality it was closer to maybe twenty minutes). But I really wasn’t worried; the scenery was distracting in its idyllic-ness. The trees were just so green, and I had never before paid much attention to the variety of verdigris that exists. Running alone along the Bicentennial Trail, it felt like I had my own private forest. I knew I had already passed the halfway mark for the 5K, meaning I was already halfway home. I was halfway to conquering the past and overcoming my own fears and insecurities.

  As I made my way through the tunnel of trees, I felt the first wave of emotions start to rise up as I considered what I was doing. What I was about to do, in less than a mile and a half.

  It wasn’t even just the running. Not really. The fact that I was running was more like a small cog in an otherwise bigger machine that had been set in motion decades before. At seventeen, I thought I knew what I wanted out of life and had a pretty certain notion of where I would be by the time I reached my thirties.

  Such, of course, is the hubris of youth because nowhere in my life plan was the concept of spending a beautiful Saturday morning at the end of August running a race in my hometown.

  But here I was, race bib pinned to the front of my tank top, laces of my shoes tied tight. Feet moving … well, maybe not swiftly, but certainly moving as fast as I could get them to go.

  I sometimes wonder what teenage me would think of the adult me. If she knew what lies ahead, would she make the same choices as I did, blind to the future? Or, would she take advantage of this certain knowledge and make different, perhaps better, choices? If I had known, as a teenager, that one day I would be a runner, would I have used my years in high school and college to cultivate my love for running at an early age?

  Who would I be now if I had discovered this sport earlier in my life? Where would I be, how many miles would I have logged, had I embraced the Annual Mile instead of rebelling against it? My friend and former roommate Megan has run multiple marathons. All those years living with her and I never took advantage of that athleticism, still scarred by too many humiliating physical education classes. Would I have multiple marathons under my legs by now? Would those legs be faster than the ones I have right now? (Probably, but I also probably wouldn’t be writing this memoir either.)

  There’s always a trade-off. While that certain knowledge would absolutely have some undisputed benefits, small choices like that which seem unimportant have consequences over the narrative arc of a person’s life. It’s the Butterfly Effect, as every ’90s kid learned from Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: �
��A butterfly flaps his wings in Peking and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine.” Small changes have far-reaching effects.

  Had I started running far earlier than I did, my relationship to the sport wouldn’t be the only thing different in my life now … My aversion to athletics had affected other areas of my life—my relationship with my parents, with my sister, with food and, in turn, my relationship with my body. By not exercising on a regular basis, I spent much of my life struggling with my weight. Job prospects, relationship prospects, it all ties in. It’s all a part of the person I am today.

  Maybe it’s silly to think of these things in such a Big Picture way—as if I have some strange notion that if I had listened to my gym teachers and actually tried to run the mile as early as sixth or seventh grade that now, twenty some years later, I’d be a fucking Boston Qualifier, or some bullshit. Or that Olympic medal winner Shalane Flanagan and I would be BFFs, sharing long runs together on the weekends. But it’s an easy fantasy to fall into, especially when I’m full of self-doubt and feeling down on myself because of my speed.

  But then I think about the parts of my life I’d be giving up if such a parallel life had come to fruition. There are moments in my history I would not like to relive, but am I willing to accept them when it’s those moments that shape who I am now?

  I often say I’m a constant work in progress, never settling or defining myself. I’m always changing, perpetually challenging myself to be better. I’m a patchwork sewn together with snatches of brief moments over three decades of this thing we call Life. Looking it all over, it’s those scary parts, the dark and twisty parts that shine the brightest.