I began running in 1994, nearly thirty years ago. I was not a runner before. (Every time I have to figure out the year I started. My older son went along with his faster buddies as an eight grader running with the high school cross country team in fall of 1993. I was so impressed by the camaraderie that the following spring I started running myself. That fall I ran with my son’s team.)

It’s been a long time and because I spent six years coaching that same cross country team, I am judgmental about runners I see on the beach even now. I want to coach them. I want to share my hard won wisdom, such as it is.

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When I started running, I was 41 years old and could not run more than a block without walking. But I had read quite a bit about running and runners. That’s why I knew to run every other day and increase my mileage gradually. As a result, from April 1st through July in 1994, I increased speed, condition, and distance. I could run six sub-10-minute miles by August. I did this for the rest of the summer and turned out with the team and in practice I could keep up with all but the varsity boys. In October of 2010, my husband and I ran the inaugural Portland Half Marathon. A couple of years after that, a foot injury and weight gain sidelined me for a few years, but I am happy to be moving again.

Here’s what I know about running:

• Go to a running store and buy good shoes and socks. Somewhere between three hundred and six hundred miles on a pair of shoes and they will give out. Buy a new pair. Runners are not cheap, but cheaper than a gym.
• If you are a woman, choose a good sport bra.* If you are a man, you’ll have to figure out what you need.
• Wear tights if your thighs rub to avoid chafing.*
• Take your gear off right after your run. Socks and undies too.
• Run one day; rest the next to allow your body to recover and become stronger.
• Increase distance gradually. Start with a short distance. Increase by tenths of a mile. I needed more than eight weeks to be able to run over a mile. Then it got easier to increase distance after that.
• Push yourself, but not to the point you are “sucking air.”
• Never try to keep up with a better runner, especially not one who is also a dancer. Dancers are in a whole other level of “in shape.”
• “Quiet feet are happy feet.”
• Relax every part of your body that you are not using while you run. Relax your fingers, hands, wrists, arms, shoulders. Run light.
• Keep your head mostly level.
• Breathe deeply. Find the rhythm that suits you.
• Swing your arms from the shoulder, not from the spine. This is the form issue I most often want to correct in runners I see who have never been coached. They swing their entire upper body back and forth when they run. They’re wasting energy they need for their legs and breath.
• If something hurts, stop running. You might give yourself 30 or 45 seconds to overcome a twinge, but pain means stop. Stop.
• A walking break of 30 seconds or a minute or two, will sometimes refresh your breath and body and allow you to go on with your run.
• If you run for no longer than an hour, and started out decently hydrated, you will not need to carry water.
• I never run to music, but many runners use music to to set their pace, and urban women I know sometimes use the tech as a way of safely ignoring catcalls by pretending they do not hear.
• I have always preferred to run in the cool of early morning. (I used to feel energized for the rest of the day, however, and now I walk a mile to cool down and take a nap later in the day.)
• Since I am old and gray, I feel free to greet the people I see on my early morning runs. “Good morning. Good morning!”
• Runners’ High is a real thing. Pure glory!

Where and when. Running the Hood to Coast Relay taught me I like running in the dark. Before I began running, I never understood why I would see people running on the highway when they could run on the flat beach. Now I know the highway doesn’t have tides, no loose dogs, and that hills are good for conditioning. Gary doesn’t like me running the highway, and it’s true I’ve had some close calls with careless drivers. We also have at least one cougar coming down from the hills behind us. So I run the beach. In Portland, I run up and down hills, sometimes right in the middle of deserted streets. Dogs are leashed and the homeless mostly asleep at six on the morning. No one has given me grief.

Mostly, I am invisible now that I am older.

When I was younger, I could run three or four sub 9-minute miles and 6 miles in under an hour. Now I run two or three 10-minute miles. In preparation for the 10k Great Bridge Crossing the first weekend of October, I am increasing my mid-week runs gradually to six miles, then taper for the last week to allow everything to heal and be strong for that race. I’ve run it twice before. Last year it was scheduled about a week before my seventieth birthday. I took a walking break at the top of each mile and I did not try to run up that awful hill but walked most of that section for an overall time of 1:11:09.0. That’s 6.2 miles of nearly eleven and a half minutes each. I placed 635th overall, 303rd among the 2270 women who finished, and 8th in my age division of 201 runners between age 60-69. I was not fast, but I did well.

This year I will be in the 70 to 79 year division. Probably slower. Like last year, I plan walking breaks and will not try to run all the way up that hill. I will finish and feel great, the way I always feel great after running.

I thought I would never run distance again after running too far, too fast, and on bad shoes and pavement in 2011. I kept trying to run for a couple of years and then stopped. After choosing to lose weight I risked a short distance, hoping to be able to run a mile again. Just one. I was very careful for a year and here I am. I will never run another half-marathon, and this third Bridge Crossing might be my last, but I can run.

I can run.

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*Find cotton gear. A recent study of synthetic sport bras (most all of them) and other running clothing found they all contain dangerous levels of carcinogens that are absorbed through the skin.