Running, or, Marching Up and Down the Square

Last year, I trained for an ran a marathon, installing that as an institution in my life. If I was out on a Saturday night, I'd generally get back to my room around ten, citing the need to wake up at seven to go for a run on New Hampshire's freezing snowmobile trails the next morning. Often, this excuse worked better than "I just like to go to bed early." 

 I like running in pretty places anytime, but I really enjoy a run once its passed the seven mile mark, which is when I get over whatever body chemistry makes you feel crappy and in pain. 

This year is not looking good for the prospect of running. First, Delhi isn't really a pedestrian friendly city, the constant traffic necessitates bravery and skill for the simplest of street crossings. This, compounded upon the fact that Delhi isn't really safe for a white woman to go running on her own, make running outside of the college near impossible. As a second consideration, the college itself has a "fitness camp" in the morning, where participants jog back and forth a hundred meter stretch of dirt about six times. There is just no way I can handle running for more than five minutes on hundred meter loops. Thirdly, there is also the present temperature to consider. 

These factors lead most people to take walks. The limited space in which to do so reminds me of a Jane Austin book in which ladies take turns around the garden or parlor for some refreshment. Simultaneously, it reminds me of the Monty Python skit about marching up and down the square. Any substantial walk requires several loops, wherever you go on campus. This evening, as I went to the rear lawn and walked up and down the length of it, back and forth at about three foot intervals, my feelings reminded me of Monty Python.

In the skit, the drill sergeant asks if there is anything anyone would rather be doing than marching up and down the square. One speaks up and says he has a book he'd like to finish, and the sergeant lets him go. One by one people come up with excuses, which leaves just the drill sergeant marching up and down the square. 

As I've said, I enjoy running, and intend to run another marathon upon my return to the US. But this prospect of not running for a year is kind of daunting. To be blunt, all women feel to some extent the pressures of having a model body. While I'm small, I'm never going to have that "perfect" kind of body. I've derived my self-confidence, as relates to body image, in part from my body's abilities. I've always been stronger than the boys in PE since gymnastics when I was young. Then came rock climbing, then came skiing, then came cycling, and finally running a marathon. My legs may not be so small in skinny jeans but they can take me twenty miles. So the prospect of returning home and being sore after a three mile run, when so recently I could do fifteen without a complaint, is one that is sticky in my mind, and an experience I expect to be humbling else ego-shattering. 

But there is something to be learned in all this. Until I can get back to the snowmobile trails of New Hampshire in zero degree weather in January, I'll have to content myself with walking up and down the square, yoga classes, and truly coming to acceptance with myself.