Cheaper Than Therapy

My sport (running) is your sport’s punishment. At least, that’s what the bumper sticker and t-shirts say. I have been a runner since I was 15, when I found out that high school tennis team tryouts would require running a ten-minute mile. After a summer of forcing myself to run three miles every day, I was hooked. Over the years, addicted to the punishment, I’ve increased the mileage and the pace. Long runs can be unbearable sometimes, but for some runners, that’s the point—enduring the pain can act as a relief from private torments. It gives suffering a purpose. Or at the very least, an outlet.

For all its agony, running has served me well for living and traveling overseas. It doesn’t require a gym membership. It’s portable, solitary, and way cheaper than therapy, that’s for sure.  And it provides lots of stories when I do it far from home. Below is a list of trends and mini-adventures I’ve encountered when running.

Street dogs

I first encountered street dogs in Uzbekistan. This sounds cruel, but the local children would throw rocks at dogs and hit them with sticks. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we learned that this helped us because the dogs were dirty, diseased, and pretty vicious. Essentially, the kids trained the dogs, so all we had to do was mime picking up a rock on the ground and they would run away. One day, I was running in the abandoned park near my host family’s house. I could hear several dogs coming up behind me, but because it was dark, with thick-as-chowda winter fog covering the valley where we lived, I had no idea how many dogs there were. I waited until they were very close, then snapped around and pretended to pick up a rock. There were at least five large, angry dogs behind me. I was pretty terrified, and I had no Plan B if they didn’t run the other way. Luckily, they did, or this cover girl wouldn’t have gone on to grace InStyle magazine ten times.

Bosnia. I only ran into street dogs twice. The first was running along the river in a highly trafficked pedestrian area. A gang of about six dogs came up behind me and surrounded me. I immediately slowed down to a walk and tried to act completely calm. They walked with me for a very tense two blocks before turning off. I never saw them again. My second experience with street dogs was my last day in the country. I was running up a steep hill just before sunrise on an empty street. Two dogs came charging down toward me barking angrily. Before I even had time to try my rock trick, a taxi came speeding out of nowhere and stopped just between me and the dogs. The driver jumped out of the car, whooping and waving at the dogs, who ran in the opposite direction. Without a word and before I could even thank him or process what happened, he hopped back in the car and drove away.

Rwanda. I have only been here a month, but already have a dog story. Yoda used to run with one of his many previous owners, so I took him running for 30 minutes up the crazy hills in our neighborhood. He loved it. I thought we would be a match made in heaven, me and Yoda. The next day, about five minutes into our run, I turn the corner. I see an ex-pat running down the boulevard toward us and halfway down a bit farther, a street dog who looks just like Yoda (which is not strange, I suppose, since Yoda is a former street dog). The ex-pat speeds up, turns the corner, and looks back at me as if to say, “good luck with the dog, sucker, not my problem anymore.” I had an internal thought of my own for this ex-pat, which I won’t repeat here, when I realized he was going to leave me with the streetdog, who immediately redirected his attention from the runner to us. Yes, the streetdog came right for us and the two dogs went at it. I tried my pretend rock-throwing trick, I tried hooping and hollering to get the other dog to go away, I tried walking away, I tried running away. As they continued to fight, I dragged Yoda to the house of a colleague nearby. As it happens, he used to live in that house (Yoda has been passed from family to family to family, so he has probably lived in half the houses in Kigali). The guard came out, recognized Yoda and chased the other dog away with his nightstick. Sigh of relief.  And we haven’t gone running together since.  

Being the Mayor/Rock star

You know that scene in Rocky when he’s running through the streets of Philadelphia, trailed by a crowd of cheering children who followed him all the way up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Depending on the country and the audience, I sometimes feel like that—part local celebrity, part rock star, part public official. In my neighborhood in Kigali, I am the mayor. Kids in school buses cheer me on. They scream with laughter when I throw my arms up like I’m crossing the finish line or kiss my biceps. The ones on foot always want to shake my hand. I am trying to teach them to fist bump. There is a local runner who gives me a high five every time he sees me. Usually I look like a deranged animal puffing and running crookedly uphill while he gracefully lopes past me. In Sarajevo, when I did my long run on the weekend, it involved several loops up a steep incline dotted with refreshment stands and playgrounds. There was an old man who was always out walking who would say, “You run too much! Come on, let’s go drink Coca Cola at the café at the top of the hill.” I would laugh and spit at him. I’m just kidding. I always pretended I didn’t understand him, even though he also mimed it, so it was impossible not to understand what he was saying. In Uzbekistan, in the same creepy park with the dogs, there was a gingerkid who only ran in the summer and would say “Guten Tag! Go! Go! Go!” And on my way back to my host family’s house from the creepy park, I would wave to the white beard (aksakal, as we said in Uzbek) who sat outside drinking tea in his long traditional robe. Even though he probably wouldn’t have been a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, he always smiled and put his hand on his heart as I went by. Perhaps he was praying for my wicked, doomed soul.

Obstacles

Running in new places isn’t exactly parkour, but it does present unexpected obstacles that help keep me alert and aware when racking up the miles. In Uzbekistan, kids would chase me with rocks, mud, and trash. In Vietnam, the motorbikes and lack of sidewalks made it perilous to run in the streets. Equally, the parks presented barriers to running, with their older occupants engaged in calisthenics, fan dances, and badminton—very stationary activities that require you to run in a zigzag pattern, while dodging outstretched limbs. In Kigali, the main impediments are cars, motorbikes, and random ditches. The cars and motorbikes get so close sometimes that I can feel them brush my arm going past. On vacation in San Juan, I was totally blocked from running by teachers protesting their low salaries right outside our hotel, and the nearby beach was too rocky to navigate safely. On another vacation, I was running in Sydney Harbour with Hubby, when we encountered the Prime Minister out for a morning power walk in his bright green and yellow track suit, along with some beefy looking security guys who would not let you pass through the restricted path they created with their armored vehicles. There is always a way around these things, whether it’s outrunning the rocks or jumping over the armored vehicles. Maybe it is more like parkour…

Scenery

The best part of running around the world, though, has been seeing some pretty majestic scenery. Hitting the hills in Colorado Springs, with Pike’s Peak looming over you and passing the kissing camel rocks in the Garden of the Gods. Jogging along the rolling coast in Cape Town, with the Atlantic Ocean below you cheering you on. Slogging up and down the impossibly angled streets of San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge emerging out of the fog. Running in the pre-dawn hours in Paris with snow covering the pedestrian paths around the Eiffel Tower, the sidewalks along the River Seine and the dirt paths in the Tuileries Garden. Sweating puddles as you pass the enormous temple of Angkor Wat trying to make it to the smiling Buddha faces of the Bayon two miles farther. Trying not to fall in the random ditch in Kigali with motorbikes grazing your arm as you watch the purple sunrise.