The leaves are changing color here in Seattle. It’s my first time living in a city with seasons; it’s my first time watching the leaves change. I’d always imagined that all the leaves on a tree changed together. As the leaves on the top yellowed, so would the leaves on the bottom, on the right and on the left. That’s not the case. The leaves change in patches. Little clumps of the tree ripple into pure yellows and oranges and reds while the rest of it stays green, waiting for its turn. I assume this has something to do with the sun, but I can’t pinpoint what. For the first time in my life, I wish I’d paid more attention in biology. Mental note to ask smarty-pants biologist sister about the leaf patches.
I went running with Trisha today. It’s cold now, the kind of cold that changes the way your lungs feel when you breathe. It happened quickly. Overnight, really. We’re on mile one of a three-mile jog around Green Lake. I tell her what I noticed about the leaves and how fascinating I find them. “It’s nice that the leaves change,” says Trisha. “It kind of helps ease the transition into winter.”
We’re approaching mile two when I feel my legs start to give out. They’re weakening in the thighs and calves, burning and threatening to quit altogether. I can still breathe fine. Not easy, certainly, but my aerobic system is holding its own. My legs are giving out before my lungs.
I’m fourteen years old and I play on my high school’s freshmen girls basketball team. It’s a huge high school and the athletic teams are fiercely competitive. The coach kicks our ass every day. He makes us run up and down and up and down and up and down the court until we don’t think we can breathe anymore. I complain to my dad about this, and, in a style typical of my father, he consoles me by determining that we will now be going on long runs each weekend. “I’ll make those practices seem easy,” he says. And he drags me out into the Arizona sun time after time and jogs me along the gray faded tar of our neighborhood’s streets. “The goal,” he tells me, “is for your legs to give out before your lungs.”
A month later, I transfer high schools and have to quit the basketball team. It’s too late for me to get a spot on the team at my new school. I replace weekend jogs with weekend partying and eventually take up smoking cigarettes. Over the course of the next decade, running will play a periodic role in my life. It will pop in and out unexpectedly and in varying degrees of intensity, like a long-estranged parent. There will be months when I run miles and miles without stopping and there will be years when I don’t run at all. Cigarettes will remain a steady and dependable source of nurture. At no point will my legs give out before my lungs.
I quit smoking cigarettes at the beginning of August, diligently applying nicotine patches to my chest until I felt I could go it alone. I haven’t had a single cigarette since. And today, for the first time in my long and bitter relationship with running, my legs gave out before my lungs.
I stopped and walked for thirty seconds to give my legs some time to heal, then started up again. Trisha and I ran the three miles in around half an hour. The goal, eventually, is to complete a half-marathon. There’s obviously some room for improvement. My legs need to get stronger, and probably my abdomen, too. I need to be more focused mentally and prepared to deal with physical discomfort and pain without panicking. I need to make huge improvements to my aerobic capacity. In short, I need to transition from the person I am today into a person who can run thirteen miles. But it doesn’t all have to happen right now; I can change in patches, too, and each patch will help ease the transition.
