Tales from Two Feet
From the thrill of a runner’s high to the chafing on a runner’s thigh, eight fast-paced writers revel in the silly, scary and sublime moments that come from life on the run.
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The Gray Shorts of Shame
By Daniel E. Slotnik
Like many spoiled, sedentary, MTA-addicted New Yorkers before me, I took up running after a period of indolence in my early twenties.
I had always regarded running as training, something to be dispensed with as rapidly as possible before playing a more interesting sport — a three-laps-around-the-field, mile-on-the-treadmill kind of deal. I was more into weightlifting, but now that football was many years behind me and I didn’t plan on getting into too many fistfights, it seemed unnecessary. Plus, if my neck got any bigger I’d have to buy new shirts.
So I bought some running shoes at JackRabbit and began working my way haphazardly around the Central Park loop. I smoked at the time, so a mile or two reduced me to a wheezing, dripping mess, whereupon I learned the joys of dehydration, heat exhaustion and relentless allergies. But I still hobbled along as lithe ultra-marathoners passed me by the dozen.
I have since given up smoking, and run a lot m…
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