English Majors Love Metaphors

November is a transitional month in a lot of ways. It’s the first month where even mild, sunny, autumnal-holdover days begin and end with a chill that foretells winter. Before the year ends, the days will start to get longer again. But November, often suddenly and bracingly cold, is dark without the tipping pendulum of a solstice. We’ve put away our summer wardrobe, but haven’t yet started to feel the camaraderie of the holiday season. We’re waiting, in November, it seems to me.

I was waiting, too, the last few weeks. Halloween came and left a silo of sugar in its wake. Instead of the occasional Kind bar and drizzle of honey, I began to mainline sugar. Oddly, then I didn’t feel that energetic, and I started letting my runs go from every other day or two to twice a week… or longer. Then Paris, and then the refugee backlash and I wasn’t just waiting. I was backsliding and coming up short on reasons to reinvest.

But November is transitional. Our routines are forced to change, but — and I forgot this for a little while — it’s up to us to make new ones.

I’d been limping along this past week with our mostly-neglected exercise bike, sitting and peddling, buoying myself with like-minded political blogs while watching my husband and daughters play some street racing video game (it’s still family time if we’re all together, right, even if some of us are being chased by the cops?).  While I had broken a sweat for the requisite minimum 3x/week (Thursday through Saturday: not my best showing, but still technically 3/3), I felt slacker’s guilt. There was no reason for this. I could do better. The forecast was warm and sunny, the snow melting… I timed a run for the warmest part of the day, and — it surprised me — I looked forward to it. Running is my time away in a way that sharing an animated street race can’t replace, sweat or no sweat.

And even though I’d been in the midst of nearly abandoning my routine, I suddenly felt renewed. Why would I give this up? My legs burned, my breath grew a little ragged and I was in a better place than I’d been in a couple weeks.

My concern with winter running, and I say this purely from speculation since I’ve always abandoned running with the first frost, is that I don’t want to look like a pre-schooler with skinned knees. Kids are tough. I am not. Also, it’s cold. In the matter of a few weeks, a nice day goes from 78 and sunny to, Did I have to chip ice off my windshield and did I choose footwear based on waterproofing? The sidewalks look like that ice planet from Star Wars, and the trails look worse.

Since June, I’ve been running one of several neighborhood routes, expanding as I added distance here and there. I start each of those routes in the same way, by crossing my street, running up the same hill, focused on the yellow warning “Dip” sign that signals the top of that first hill and the beginning of some downhill recovery action.

Today, in the midst of exactly that same routine, but hopscotching through icy sidewalks, I became aware of something. I could, if I so chose, run on the SUNNY side of the street.

The funny thing about the sunny side of the street was that it was literally right in front of me. Well, literally within my periphery. And it was as obstacle-free as my side was hurdled. But it didn’t immediately occur to me to cross the street. Because I run on THIS side of the street. I know which houses on this side of the street have free-range dogs and who never pulls their trash cans back in, forcing me to run around them. I know where the first seasonal decorations will go up, and I know which overhanging branches require a bob and weave.

On the OTHER side of the street? I honestly have no idea. It’s beyond logic, but that’s uncharted territory. I just don’t run over there. Those houses and their dogs and their branches are strangers… until today. Because sometimes crossing to the sunny side of the street is the only thing that makes any sense, even when — maybe especially when — we’re white-knuckling our routines like lifeboats. There are no medals for running through the snow when dry pavement is available, but sometimes I forget that the route is up to me.

November might not be so bad.