Running, Home Runs, and running being home

September 03, 2023

If you would have told me when I was 13 and started running cross country – and I came home from practice every day telling my mom I was going to quit – that running would eventually become such an important part of my life that I would choose where to live based on running routes … well, I would have thought you were crazy.

I would have believed that adult Kat would place as great an importance on place as adolescent Kat(hleen, since I only started going by Kat in college). But not that running would be that central to my life. Yet it is. That’s a constant for me, but why top of mind, top of Substack this week?

3 reasons: Marathon training, Appreciation of Health, Thinking about where to live in Barcelona. Bonus reason: Coach Bennett’s Substack this week on “Home Runs” and the runs that feel at home in that most comfortable and cozy sense of the word.

Let’s take those in reverse:

Where do I want to live in Barcelona? I will be moving to Barcelona in a couple of months, and I have had a firm idea of where I want to live for a few years now in Barcelona. That will be tweaked based on where it will be easiest to reach Sitges office and Barcelona office from, but beyond what neighborhoods I like from a feel/food/architecture/etc standpoint, I want to be able to reach running routes with no/nearly no stoplights or need to stop for traffic in about 10 minutes running, and I want the sea to be not much further than that. That rules out areas that I really like the neighborhood like Gracia, because I would be driven crazy being far from easy run paths.

For most of my years in NYC, I lived within a ¾ mile radius in the West Village, Soho, Greenwich Village, always within a half-mile of the West Side Highway Running Path and Hudson River Park. NYC is actually a runner’s dream. Or at least Manhattan. It’s a narrow island, so you can get to either west or east side in max one mile at widest part of the island. If you’re uptown, you also have Central Park. The nicest apartment I lived in in NYC of 8 apartments was in Brooklyn, in Fort Greene, for only a few months. While I loved many things about the neighborhood, it drove me nuts because it was 1 ½ miles to get to a big place (Fort Greene Park is way too small for a distance runner) to run like Brooklyn Bridge Park/bridges to cross into Manhattan and run along the river/Prospect Park.

Coach Bennett in his Substack this week talked about “Home Runs”, those familiar places where you run at ease. You know every detail of the route and don’t have to think about distance or conditions because you know them so well.

In NYC, my “Home Run” was leaving from the West Village/GV/Soho and running south along Hudson River Park either to do a loop around lower Manhattan  (about 6-7 miles, depending on how many piers I included) or to then cross over Chambers Street and the Brooklyn Bridge, run in and out the piers in Brooklyn Bridge Park and then come back (sometimes going on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade for one way), which would be in the 10-mile range. Another that I used to do would be early a.m. before traffic hit, running down through the West Village/Soho/Chinatown and looping over the Manhattan Bridge and back via Brooklyn Bridge or vice versa. Running with Pitch and Run became another Home Run, meeting at Chelsea Piers, linking up with terrific people, stopping at Little Island for a picture, then down to where Battery Park juts out and turning around. And my once-upon-a-time Home Run was the Nike NYC Home Run that Coach Bennett led, running in Central Park 3 or 5 or 7 miles, up to you. Both those latter two had the benefit of giving me friendships and relationships I cherish to this day.

Valencia is terrific – I run less than a mile to get to Jardines del Turia with its miles and miles of running paths, as well as running along the beach. My standard run is running from home right in the center of town to Jardines del Turia, sometimes via Avenida del Reino de Valencia, going past the City of Arts and Sciences, looping along the Marina and reaching the Arena de Las Playas (perhaps extending along the beach for a bit) and back. About 8 miles.

My original Home Runs back in Davenport, Iowa, were mostly along Duck Creek Trail. My parents’ house, and the house we lived in from when I started high school and began running, is very near my high school. And so running either west along the trail to Duck Creek Park and back (7 miles) or east along the trail to Jersey Ridge Road or Duck Creek Park and back (6 or 8 miles) is my Home Run there. Even in Iowa, always looking for water to run near.

In Barcelona, I have two Home Runs: one being to run along the beach and the other at Carretera de les Aigües. I’ve done the former 50 times more often, usually able to run from my hotel or wherever I am staying to the beach and then run along it, often via Parc de la Ciutadella. Carretera de les Aigües is another path I love, but as less convenient to get to, I’ve done it far less frequently.

So this past week as a friend was giving me advice to live in the high parts of the city, I had to stop and say, I’m sorry, but absolutely not. I’m going to live somewhere that is convenient for running and for me to reach the sea.

Know what you love and put more of it in your life. I know what I love and also what will frustrate me to no end.

Since this is already getting a bit long, I am going to combine marathon training and appreciation of health.

Yesterday I ran my longest run since the car crash – 14 miles. At the start of the year, I registered for the Valencia Marathon Dec. 3rd (3 months from today). After dealing with long Covid issues through all of 2022 – not severe, but impactful – I finally seemed over it early this year, and in 4 months, slashed 50 seconds per mile off my runs. I even thought I might have a chance at a PR in the marathon. In March, I had my best running month since before getting Covid, and then late March 31st, I was a passenger in a car crash and suffered herniated cervical discs and a concussion.

I was on medical leave and couldn’t run for a couple months, and thought I probably wouldn’t be able to run the marathon. Yet in the last 3 months, while I still have pain in my neck and go to a fisio each week, I’ve been able to build my distance up and go more miles before the neck pain gets bad and makes me nauseous.

Over the last month, I started to believe I could perhaps run the marathon. Yesterday, I hit 14 miles. So I am pretty confident that I will be able to cover 26.2 miles, even if not going for a PR.

In that run, I also was pondering the balance between pushing it as hard as possible and being prudent. I had wanted to go 15 miles (though hadn’t gone beyond 13.1 since the car accident), but the last bit I not only had significant pain, it was making me dizzy.

At that point, you get into being stupid and risking severe injury or illness. So going 14 miles was a feat, but knowing when to stop was also a feat.

It’s been a decade now (!!!) since I began running again after having a stroke. I hadn’t been able to run almost at all since my concussion June 29, 2011. Interestingly, just before the concussion, I hadn’t been running much. I was kind of burned out on running after 15+ years of running almost daily when not injured. But two years of not being able to run at all gave me the greatest appreciation for it.

I still haven’t lost that appreciation.

Know what you love and get more of it in your life.

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