The Runner Stumbles

My indescribably talented friend D. once wrote a story called, "I Run Every Day." It was the very disturbing tale of a poorly socialized rapist (although to call D. the sweetest man on the planet would be a vast understatement) and it eventually got published in Harpers because when it comes to writing, D. is a bad a**. I bring it up because when your friend shows you his new first-person story about a date rapist who thinks he's misunderstood, your reaction is usually not a shocked and disgusted: "Wait - do you RUN?" Yes. It was worse contemplating him as a runner than a date rapist.

I'd hoped to keep at least a couple of my friends as couch potatoes with me, but no - they keep getting picked off, one by one, as if physical fitness was a newly devised form of Body Snatching (and it might well be.) And now as I've pointed out, I live across from the epicenter of running in Seattle: Green Lake.

I decided one day, watching as the f**king runners made yet another show-offy loop dragging their labs/retrievers/labadoodles/boston terriers/shepards behind them in big bursts of canine eagerness, that I could not be the last able-bodied woman in Seattle to at least try running. So I signed up for Boot Camp, where the receptionist (who even sounded super-fit) told me that we would run 3 to 5 miles every class in sprints and laps. Soon I would be able to take my fearless terrier mutt to join the pedigree darlings. Or so I thought.

But here's the thing. I hate running. Also, I'm very bad at running. I'm low to the ground. I have short legs. I am voluptuous to the tune of D cups. I pronate. It would not surprise you, Dear Readers, to learn that I'm the slowest runner in the group. I'm so slow that tonight the only fat woman in the class (and perhaps in Seattle) managed to smoke me by half a lap. That's how slow I am. I can't propell 110 pounds past 210.

I'm not good at the other parts of the class either. I can't do push-ups, I can't do sit-ups, and there's something called a "power hop" that had to be designed by Satan himself. There are people who aren't athletic. I'm in another category: I'm sub-athletic. I seem to repel all forms of exercise. About the only thing I can do is hold the water bottle.

It's an interesting twist that I've always been drawn to sporty men. Now I don't mean the kind of guys like my friend N. from Outside who always seems to be riding his bike 200 miles and then taking a 30 mile hike to cool down. Bicycles and roller blades are kind of a deal breaker for me - I don't need to see a guy in his bike shorts EVER. I mean men who like to play and talk boy sports. Baseball, soccer, basketball - with the kind of lean torso you get from having played team sports all through school. That kind of guy.

There's a lot of them in Seattle, and hopefully I'll meet one someday that won't say: "Baby, it's a gorgeous day. Let's go for a run."