"And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up"

I am recovering from an injury currently. It is, as far as I can tell, some kind of ankle sprain or strain.

My unofficial goal for 2025 was to run a full marathon, and I had started extending my mileage in earnest a few weeks ago when the weather started to turn.

I do run outside every day in January and February, but it's often too gross to do more than a couple of miles--and there aren't enough daylight hours to put in 5-8 miles a day safely while running in an icy city.

I was eager to get back to the longer distances. Too eager, apparently. I did a couple of 40 mile weeks without ramping up to them, and now I'm on the couch.

I am astounded by how hard it is to be without a daily run. I have no idea how my Dad has survived without it for the past year. 

I am taking stock, as I look out the window with my ankle elevated, of how fragile our seasons of running have been.

I don't think that I owned a single item of athletic clothing in college, but I would often take ambling jogs around my neighborhood (in jeans, apparently) just for the pleasure of running. I eventually did get some shorts and would often run back and forth to school on warm days in graduate school. I played ultimate frisbee from time to time and reveled in my (unearned and surprising to me) ability to keep going when everyone else's legs were shot.

J and I switched from walking to running the triangle of Westside, Buffalo, and Orchard during our first year of marriage, and then made occasional runs through our neighborhood in Greensboro, but never anything more than a mile or two.

We started training to do a 5K together once we'd moved back to New York, but she hurt her hip and we had to scrap the plan--and then she got pregnant.

It was when James was a baby that running became an every day activity for me. I would take him out in a jogging stroller and we'd do a loop through Pittsford along the canal trail and then back through the Pittsford Plaza. We'd say hello to the Scary Horse, then end at the Pittsford Wegman. (He could get a free cookie.)

It was when Owen arrived that running became an institution for J and me together. We bought a double jogger that felt like a huge financial risk in the moment but turned out to be an everyday investment in one of the sweetest seasons of our marriage. We had several different courses but did about 3 miles every day that the weather was warm enough for several years of being young parents. 

We would talk about what we were reading, catch up on each other's days, and revel in the babies' delight in being outdoors and in our neighborhood. We got to know the pets, shops, and people of Irondequoit. We found a source for more free cookies. 

James moved to a scooter and then to a bicycle once Felix came along, and Owen continued to ride in the stroller long past being too heavy for its suspension just for the pleasure of horsing around with Felix as I pushed them up, down, and around the neighborhood. 

J was a confirmed every-day runner by the time we graduated from the stroller, and we'd acquired a treadmill by then so that she could run indoors and through the winter. We both kept up steadily upping our mileage, year after year, and even though we couldn't run together very often we did parallel training so that we could do two half-marathons together.

It was in the final lead-up to the second half that we ran together that she hurt her hip again, and that was the end of another season of our running. She'll occasionally do a few miles around the neighborhood with me, but it never doesn't cost her, and she's come to grips with being an ex-runner by getting her daily movement in on an elliptical. Thus ended another season.

Running, when I look back at it, feels incredibly fragile and beautiful. I'm not sure I ever appreciated, in the moment that I was in, how lucky I was to get to do it or how quickly the season would end. We ran with the double stroller every day, so it just seemed natural that tomorrow would have another double-stroller-run. Until a tomorrow arrived that didn't have one.

Running is a lot like life in that way. 

I think that my ankle will be okay if I take a week or two off. And when I get to step outside in a green, warm neighborhood and make my legs ache and rejoice at the same time, I won't take it for granted.