Routes

My running routes have names. They always have. Sometimes they have been private names- for those routes that only I run and share only briefly with strangers on a weekend morning. Other times they have been shared names used to communicate with others the places we should pass in sync. But my routes have always had names. I suppose it is part of the deep familiarity I suspect most runners build with the simple act of running. At a certain point your cadence is natural, coming simply and purely on any given day. Breath achieves a simple rhythm and the mind can finally wander. And routes receive names. The turns, rises, and falls all become part of the landscape upon which the run is written. It is beautiful. It is familiar.

This year my parents finally sold their home in suburban Chicago. With the sale of that house I felt that I would perhaps never run the river front trail or neighborhood loops I worked hard to forge. When I began running in high school a four mile run was strenuous and hard won. But as the years went on I began to run further from school, sharing the various routes with my team mates. And I also began to carve out familiar paths from my home for those summer runs or weekend recovery jogs. "31 and back" became my post-meet shake out. "Otto" was my tempo route for a good 6 mile workout. And when I left for college those routes were always waiting for my return on a holiday break. But now there is nowhere for me to return to. I wonder if those routes will ever belong to anyone else. Will someone give them a different name? Sure, there were plenty of people I would see on any given stretch, but the totality of the entire route was really mine and mine alone. On those frigid days in late January the entire world felt like mine out there. That last stretch down Charles at the end of the Haegers Bend Loop was always waiting for me. Maybe it still waits, but for someone else now.

It takes time for routes to become intimate friends. All those routes from my home, high school, or college began as strangers whose miles seemed to drag out (Where would we turn around? Was it this block or the next for five miles? It's hot today, I wonder if there will be any good shade out there). But over time, as the runs stack up upon one another, the path becomes certain and reliable (It's hot today, I should go North on Lake to make sure there's water if I need it. My lags are pretty sapped today, I'll keep it flat with an easy Boat Launch run). And I've now had to leave behind many of those familiar routes and ways because that's what happens in life. From time to time I get to return to those old friends and I can recapture, however briefly, that deep, bodily memory that comes with re-running an old route. But more importantly, I now am asked to forge new bonds with new places.

Part of what made my childhood home feel like home was that I had those familiar routes. At each juncture of my life since I began running I have developed deep relationships with my surroundings through running. My hometown belonged to me because I could cross any space I wanted to through well-known avenues. The Chicago landscape felt truly intimate when I knew the streets and paths I would cross over- accelerating or trotting along as I so chose. When I lived in Princeton my relationship with running eroded, and I had a harder time establishing a sense of belonging as I had in the past. And now that I'm in Madison, familiar routes are beginning to emerge as I settle in to a sense of being and belonging. 

Memory and running aren't far from one another, in my world. Everywhere I have had a route I have embedded parts of myself in the landscape. Routes have names. They are the names I gave them. They are mine even when they are shared.