Running Mates

If you want to make friends, you should start running.

You could join a running club, start training for a marathon with a group, sign up for a neighborhood race, meet at a running store for their regularly scheduled runs or better yet, do what I did.  Just start running. 

If you're looking for a job, a boyfriend, a girlfriend or just a friend.....run.

Here are some of the highlights from my running career.  It's not a career filled with winning medals or personal records.  Instead, it's a career filled with friends.  And some never even become real friends.  We just smile as we pass each other on the running path and they have no idea that they're a member of what I call my silent community.  Some day they might enter my life for a few minutes, a few miles or a few years.  We might even get to know each other in something other than running clothes.  But even if we don't, in some strange way I still consider them my running friends.

I learned to speak Spanish running.  After months of "hola-ing" and "ciao-ing" every morning, I finally stopped and met Ramiro at the drinking fountain.  He didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any Spanish, but my Italian got us off to a good start and eventually I started speaking Spanish!  It wasn't until six months later that he realized I was American and not Italian.  I eventually became his emergency contact on job applications, his translator at the hospital after a bad burn, and a guest in his family's home in San Cristobal near Toluca, Mexico.  He's an illegal immigrant and can't travel so his mom welcomed me like a daughter which brought her closer to the son she hadn't seen for 6 years.  And when I was with her in Mexico guess what we did every morning? 

Then there's Shel.  He's 81 and he runs everyday.  (He really thinks he's still running.)  We'd finally started talking because I'd realized I'd seen him "running" in Michigan, too.  I've since been invited to his house, seen his college basketball photos and met his wife and admired her watercolors.

In 2005 I ran a half marathon in Dolo, Italy where I met Fausto and Annamaria.  I normally don't run half marathons, but I was sleeping in a town that was hosting one so I got up and ran it.  Fausto started speaking to me in Italian and I told him that I didn't speak Italian (in Italian) and 21 kilometers later I had some new Italian friends. In 2012, they're coming to run the Chicago Marathon with me.  Why was I in Italy in 2005 in the first place?  I'd gone to visit some other Italians that I'd met running the Moscow Marathon in 2003.

I'd been smiling at Sara on the lakefront in Chicago for several years.  That's all.  Only smiles.  Then one day she stopped me, introduced herself and asked me to run home with her because she thought someone was following her.  I guess I'd become a part of her silent community, too.  A smile can go a long way.

I would've had a completely different experience in Ethiopia if I wasn't a runner.  On the first morning in Addis Ababa I took a walk and found myself sitting in what seemed like a strange, multi-tiered park. Then it started to fill up with runners doing laps on the tiers.  The next day I went back in my running shoes which was all it took to meet Lemma and his friends. I spent the next two weeks traveling with them to train at an even higher altitude, I went to the stadium for an Ethiopian track meet and I spent Easter in Lemma's village in the countryside where some of the kids had never seen white skin.  They tried to clean me off as if I were covered with paint or chalk.  There's only one reason I made it to that remote village.  I'm a runner.

A few days ago it was really windy and I was really tired and feeling really lazy.  A man in front of me was struggling to take his coat off while continuing to run and I made an unnecessary comment (it certainly wasn't my first) and we ended up running together for 3 miles.  I was doing a long run to train for my 20th marathon, which I thought was cool until he told me he was doing a long run to train for his 59th.  He's 62 years old, I think.  And he's run a 100 MILE ultramarathon. My ultras were only 50 KILOMETERS.  I'll leave the math to you, but he's a lot more impressive.  He also volunteers for a really cool organization called Back on My Feet.  Three days a week at 5:30 a.m. he meets at a homeless shelter to run with any interested residents.  Back on My Feet is "a nonprofit organization that promotes the self-sufficiency of those experiencing homelessness by engaging them in running as a means to build confidence, strength and self-esteem."  Eventually they can earn points to earn money which goes towards building their new lives.  Do you think I still felt tired or lazy after I met Jim?

Then there's the Dalai Lama.  That's not his real name, of course, it's just one of the many nicknames I've bestowed on fellow runners like Smiley, Thumbs-up Guy, Celly (it's awful, but it's short for cellulite) Low Waver, See-through Pants, Blind Runner (which isn't a nickname.  He wears a t-shirt that says Blind Runner and has a variety of different guides at his side throughout the week), Braces Lady, Bruise (he always wears black and blue), K Swiss Lady, and Peanut Man.  But, back to the Dalai Lama.  He's in a polyamorous relationship.  I didn't know what that was until I learned it on the running path.  He told me that his wife was a runner, too, and that I might recognize her because she runs with her long hair blowing in the wind.  Of course I knew her.  She's Lady with Her Hair Down.  I've always been jealous because it feels great to run with my hair down, but I feel kind of silly doing it. There's something about the wind blowing through sweaty hair that doesn't feel quite the same when it's in a ponytail.  It's kind of like skinny dipping.  Anyway, Mr. Polyamorous (a.k.a. Dalai Lama) told Lady With Her Hair Down (a.k.a. Mrs. Dalai Lama) who I was.  A few days later when we passed on the path we both knew that we knew who each other was, but we acted like we didn't. 

Running might make you feel old (when you can't read the lap pace on your watch unless you take it off and set it on the ground to get it far enough away from your old eyes) or it might make you feel young (when at age 44 you drag an 18-year old boy to the finish line of his first marathon in Switzerland).  Most importantly, it makes you feel connected.......connected to the places (Jardin du Luxembourg), the things (fields of poppies and bales of hay in San Zenone) and the people that you meet along the way.

So if your New Year's Resolutions include getting more exercise, making new friends and discovering new places, my advice to you is......RUN.