Day 4

Art may disagree with me about what I’m about to say, but it has been my experience that running or walking with a buddy is always better than training alone.

I first started running when my father insisted on me (and later my siblings) joining him at about age 11, after we had moved from upstate New York to north Texas. At the time, I believed that he was doing this to build up my character and get his stick-figure intellectual son into some kind of shape, but I later came to understand that he enjoyed running with people, and this was a way to have quality time with his children.

I never really got into running for fun during those years because it just seemed mostly painful and exhausting. And now that I reflect on it, my shoes probably didn’t help. As I remember it, running shoe technology was very basic back then. According to Wikipedia, specialty athletic shoes were very limited in the Seventies:

From 1970 (five models), to 1998 (285 models), to 2912 (3,371), the number of sport shoe models in the U.S. has grown exponentially. 

Imagine what my shoes were like in those years! If I wasn’t running in white Keds (my favored shoe), I was probably running in the equivalent of Converse Chuck Taylors with modified soles fresh out of a waffle iron.

It wasn’t until college in the Eighties that I rediscovered running. The campus and Capitol area were runner-friendly, with long stretches of automobile-free paths through beautiful surroundings, as well as air conditioned buildings with cold water fountains, a necessity in central Texas. I loved walking into the Capitol building at night and catching my breath amidst all of the Texas history. I’m not sure if they let you do that anymore - another casualty of our world of metal detectors and high security, I suppose.

Anyway, when I left Austin and moved to Houston in 1989, I started running regularly in Memorial Park. My first running buddy was a Houston Chronicle reporter that I knew from my days working at the student newspaper at UT, Tara Parker-Pope. She and I made the loop and talked about politics and relationships and the world, and I found that I could literally have a conversation for the entirety of the run. It was like my brain could only manage one thing at a time - either hating the run and focusing on the pain in my feet, my lungs and my legs, OR focusing on being charming and witty in my repartee with my friend. As long as I was talking, everything else I could have been thinking or feeling was shoved aside, tamped down into a corner of my brain.

Tara and her husband Kyle later left for New York City, and I needed a new running buddy, so an intern at the DA’s Office and I started running together. Chad Bridges was an Aggie and had been a walk-on for the football team. He was smart, friendly, athletic and most importantly, great company. Over the years, we talked about everything with the proviso that our conversations were under the umbrella of what we called “runners privilege.” I’d love to tell you what we discussed, but…runners privilege. Suffice to say, he and I became close friends and eventually ran the 1994 Houston Marathon, both finishing that year.

When Chad eventually left Harris County in the mid-Nineties to start his legal career (and he was a great success, culminating with his  re-election yesterday to a district court bench in Fort Bend County), I tried to find other running buddies with minimal success.  Then I was hit by a bus, and running was no longer an option for a long while.

After I recovered, I tentatively started running again with my neighbor Danica Marrelli, and then we were joined by John Floyd, another resident of the neighborhood and a first-rate defense attorney. We trained together for two or three years and ultimately ran a half-marathon in 2012, all finishing. I owe them a lot because I don’t think I would have gotten back into some semblance of shape without them.

John later moved away from Pearland into Houston proper and Danica joined a local running club, and I was again looking for a running pal, but mostly just not running at all.

That’s why when Avina texted me today and invited me to walk with her at Rice, I was thrilled. We met at the corner of Greenbriar and University, and walked the Rice campus loop, and it was like old times again. We have talked about Thanksgiving plans, struggles with eating too much of the foods I love, and the expenses of boarding dogs for family vacations. She was cheerful and positive and my brain shut down the complaint desk for a happy fifty minutes while we flew through an average of 15:09 per mile, a full minute faster than yesterday’s walk.

Then we grabbed an iced tea to go and raced to the gym to make our 12:15 workout with Art.  Deadlift day, as you can see in this video recording (reminder to self: no future videos in profile):

I am looking forward to more buddy walks/runs with Avina, as well as with Art, who lives nearby and who was my walking buddy this summer while he was recovering from a hernia surgery. “Call me,” he said. “I need the miles.”

Will do, sir.