My Trail Running Valentine

I’ve been in love with trail running for many years. And not just any love, but the 80’s rom-com-standing-outside-with-a-boombox-in-the-rain type of love. Which is to say, an inappropriate amount of love directed at an amorphous concept that has no ability whatsoever to love me back (We all have a type). 

I wish it was a mature, candle-lit dinner a la Nicholas Sparks. But it’s not. It’s not always 100 percent healthy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Our relationship can be a bit of a roller coaster. Through broken bones, stitches and a whole host of itis-es, my love has never wavered. 

Running, I want to write you a love letter. I want to exchange furtive notes with you in the back of the classroom and make you embarrassingly earnest mix tapes. I want to make you breakfast and introduce you to my parents. Is it too soon to get matching tattoos?  Someone whose self-awareness wasn’t so clouded by infatuation would be embarrassed. I was never the type to play it cool.

The trails could be considered my longest-running (forgive me) relationship. I’ve given as much of myself to the sport as is possible, and certainly far more than is socially acceptable, or really recommended. While I like to think I’m kind and generous in human relationships, I’ve never tracked my affection volume through an app, calculated the number of carbs required for a third date or coated my between-the-toe skin in lube for a person (the sheer amount of lube required to sustain this relationship would make the uninitiated blush). But I’ve done all that, and myriad more foolish, illogical things for running. 

I’ve spent more time swiping through topo maps than Tinder, trying to find the perfect match for a weekend tryst. I’ve never spent as much time or thought getting ready for a date as I have for an alpine start. I don’t need a heart-rate monitor to tell me how you make my pulse race. How many times have I collapsed into my couch, exhausted from a long morning spent with you, still sweaty and sore, just to start dreaming about our next rendezvous? Is it too soon?

I don’t even care that I’m not your one and only. I love that our affection is shared. Some of the truest intimacy I’ve known are the many other loves running has brought into my life. Friends, partners – an entire community of people who share my love for something heartbreakingly pointless. I’m grateful that running has taught me to know and care for myself, somewhere between long miles on pristine alpine single track and long minutes on the foam roller. Loving running has taught me to raise the game on how I show up for myself and others, reminding me that I owe myself, and everyone, at least the same tenderness, care and attention I show a tight plantar. 

I do hope we grow old together, trail running and I. But I also know that the inevitable conclusion of our relationship is that someday (if I’m lucky) my run will slow to a walk, and our relationship will be all but unrecognizable to outsiders. And that’s okay, because it was only ever for us, anyway. The fact that no day with running is guaranteed is what makes our connection beautiful. I hope I’m grateful for more of the days – and runs – than I take for granted. 

Through all the heartbreak and disappointment, our love is worth it. It’s worth the black toenails and quasi-permanent sunburn, and it’s worth having geriatric ankle joints. Our love is worth the 4 a.m. wake-ups and finding a partially consumed GU in nearly every load of laundry.  It’s almost worth all the foam rolling. 

To quote Kara Goucher, “Nothing in my life has ever broken my heart the way running has. And yet I cannot breathe without it.”

I’ve made peace with the fact that running might not love me back in the way that I want it to. I want it to guarantee me a lifetime of take-my-breath-away adventure, and perfect, reciprocal care. But it can’t, because it’s just running. It can’t guarantee me anything, which is, in and of itself, a gift. A gift because it teaches me that the true nature of love isn’t transactional, or even always reciprocal. Sometimes it’s just loving something so much that your whole self aches for it, and you get nothing but black toenails in return. But for every bruised nailbed, there’s also a chance for that single, transcendent moment on a mountaintop, or the chance to feel truly held by a canyon. I think the chance is worth it.

Even when you break my heart with injuries, setbacks, plateaus and days that make me question all the training decisions I’ve ever made, I know you’ll be there for me, in one way or another. The only given is that things will change, and only one will be constant: I’ll still be hopelessly, irrationally, in love with you.