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.

Illustrations by Simon Moreton

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 giv…