Speed

This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Truth. The whole series is here. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.

My speed (or lack of it) on my first outdoor runs would often take me by surprise. There was just as little to account for the days when I rocketed through a series of seven-minute miles as for those when I poked along at nine and a half. Maybe the wind was at my back or my legs were a little less fatigued; maybe more adrenaline flowed because of some recent triumph or irritation. Maybe I imagined myself bounding like an astronaut over regolith. Maybe there were no red lights.

Last winter I started going to a running class at the gym in which intervals of near-maximum effort are interspersed with slower recovery. I found I could do close to 12 miles per hour for a minute at a time, and that the exhilarations of this outshined those of a regular outdoor pace—itself quite a thrill in the sharp-elbowed obstacle course of the city—but also that it aggravated the tightness of a ligament along the outer edge of my left leg and winched my knee into sidelining pain.

Eventually I figured out how to stretch the iliotibial band and alleviate the issue, but since then the upper limits of speed haven’t held the same appeal. Actually, in recent months I’ve found myself using running as a platform for exploration, running more slowly and tentatively, more flexibly, in new places, on unfamiliar streets. This has taken me to a few different edges of the Hudson River and down the main drag of Torrey, Utah, and through the desolate historic site of a Civil War fort in Nashville. It’s hard to sprint when you’re wandering, and when it comes to running I find myself tending more, for now at least, toward the latter.

I’m trying for a marathon next year, so I recently split my weekly running time from two sessions into three. This is a more languorous undertaking than, say, cycling class. A chance to listen to a whole album of music and look at the sky and dart around pedestrians and marvel at the speed and concision with which a human body duly able and trained can move across a landscape we’ve been misled to think requires the use of some device. I can assure you after more than a decade of residency in New York City and use of its major modes of transport that nothing makes you more present to the place—its variety, its compactness, its aggressions, and its less-than-obvious coherence—than a run down the length of Bleecker Street.

The ambition to run further will invite more attention to endurance—to abiding—and less to speed, but as I’ve progressed in the sport, and come to find it inherently joyful, I can’t object. Somewhere in the experience of running is an idyllic speed, at which you wouldn’t win a race and yet at which the motion is sustainable and assertive—a challenge, not a depletion. In nuclear fusion, as we’ll be hearing about later today, a (historically remarkable) reaction in which the energy generated is equal to the energy used to generate it is called ignition: “energy gain of one.” I’m struck that it’s one—that something other than zero represents balance. So it goes, I guess, with efforts of the body: To run and not be weary. That’s the speed you want.

Coming Friday: Breath.

Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.