I am aware this sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t.

On 1 April 1994, I was 41 years old and had never been a runner, but the previous autumn, our older son Alan had been invited, along with his buddies Jasper and Bowen, as 8th graders to run with the high school cross country team. Through most of high school, Alan was not Varsity, though that had changed by his senior year. Alan’s friend Jasper, however, was the one his coaches were most after and would go to State. What I observed of the boys’ and girls’ teams was a cheerful commitment to their tasks and a generous outpouring of team support. The girls team sang during warm-ups and cool-downs (several were in Choir—I remember Becca’s and Erin’s voices) and they routinely told one another “Good job!”

The following year, I asked the head coach, Neil Branson if, were I able, he would allow me to run with the team. Neil said absolutely.

I began running on April Fools Day as a joke to myself. I’d read a few articles and figured I would likely be unable to run for any distance. My knees would fail me. I would get discouraged. I assumed I would likely have to give up as I had during a failing effort in my 20s. Nevertheless, I set a goal to begin with a half mile run and then slowly increase distance as I gained condition. That day, I asked Alan to run with me. He was much faster than I could manage and in seconds outdistanced me. As soon as he was a few steps ahead, because I was struggling, I slowed to walk, but ran again when he turned around to see where I was. He circled back a few times but I ran only when he was looking and managed to run only a fraction of that first quarter mile south to Arch Cape Creek (it’s actually more like 0.3 miles each way). Alan finally figured out I couldn’t run any distance at all, barely a block and maybe not even that. “That’s pitiful, Mom,” he said with a kind of horror. I laughed, because what was the alternative? I told him I would need time to get in condition. “I’m old and out of shape.” But I was only out of shape.

I was also unwilling to invest in gear until I proved to myself that I would use it. I was running in cotton shorts that gave me a rash and handmedown shoes two sizes too small. Big mistake.

It took me a couple of months, maybe three to get to running a full mile. By then I was looking for proper gear: sport bra, good socks, running tights, and shoes that mostly fit.

By August of 1994, I could run six measured 9-minute miles. I did that every other day—six miles in no more than 55 minutes—one day to push myself, the next to heal. By the time cross country started up the end of August, I could keep up with all but the Varsity Boys team during practice. That fall, I ran more than eight miles with Choir Master Jim Taylor, including up hills. I’d been training on the road whenever the tide was in, and that meant running up a stiff hill on highway 101. My blood pressure in those days was 90/60 and my pulse ran under 60.

I’d been a champion walker in college. I walked miles to my studio, miles to shop and downtown… We had no car so I had no choice. Now, by choice, I became a runner.

I even coached for years until teaching 205 students, advising Yearbook, coaching, and taking care of my family became too much, and the only thing I was allowed to quit was coaching cross country. I cried all the way home from school. Two great runners also played soccer, and when one of them came across the finish line at Districts, she was mumbling, “I’m gunna throw up!” I took her arm to keep her walking. “You won!” I said, and she stood up straight and was fine again!

Certainly, I overdid it at times. Trying to keep up with dancer Jennifer Wascher, I had shin splints that sidelined me for a week or so. I’ve been diagnosed with plantar fasciitis and sciatica and various other minor injuries that most often have been entirely predictable and the result of overdoing something when I ought to know better. My feet have given me particular trouble, which I blame on those early years of wearing bad shoes. I wear a 7.5-8 in a wide, and not every brand works for me.

[I’ve fallen any number of times without injury—on the sand, on a gravel shoulder, on a paved city street. The last doctor I saw on the coast was quite adamant that I would certainly be in a wheel chair by now, that my bone scans were the worst she’d ever seen. She insisted on detailed and horrific warnings. I kept trying to explain that I’d been through this already with my own mother’s osteoporosis. She was a bully, overweight and out of shape herself, and the bone scan she alluded to was so inaccurate it has entirely vanished from my medical charts.]

Yesterday, Gary and I walked four miles. This morning it was cold, raining, and blowing about 15 mph. Gary wanted to stay in bed.

I got up, got dressed, and went out to run a “half mile” south and back home. I am not in as bad shape as I was all those years ago, but I still needed two walking breaks (totaling 1.5 minutes) to manage the distance to Arch Cape Creek and back. I am old now, slow and out of shape. It might take me till August to run a full mile, but TODAY I RAN.

We’re having French toast for breakfast, and tomorrow is a walking day.