Lakeshore Path

Alicia had been an athlete all through college. She’d been out three years now. She had been a varsity level near-star on her college’s Women’s Water Polo team. Strangely, most thought, she took up running after graduation. She didn’t want anything to do with Water Polo or swimming or anything like it. Alicia was a strong runner.

Water polo: it’s all legs.

Over the last three weeks, though, she had found her interest in running ebbing. She lived in Chicago and liked to take her runs down Lakeshore Drive, with every other runner in the city. Like a lot of strong runners, she’d get going and it would become very meditative for her. She would tear along and think about her life, past loves, how much she wanted to see LA Story again. That sort of thing.

This time, though, she thought about running. She thought about how it had gotten sort of easy. She thought about how she had to go out for a good 90 minutes to even feel like it had tested her. She thought it was isolating her from other people. She thought she didn’t enjoy it as much as she used to anymore and she thought that maybe she didn’t need to stay in quite so strong a fighting shape. She wasn’t fighting, right?

So she stopped running.

She had probably gone a good eight miles out at that point. She had sort of lost track of time and what she was doing. Her mind had cycled around the argument so much that she had found herself following the path, looking through the next twenty yards, forgetting that she had a pedometer on in the first place.

Eight miles from home in runner’s shorts and a sports bra. She could run back in a little over an hour, less if she pushed herself. She could walk it in about 2.5.

See, she thought to herself, this is what I’m talking about. Running has just burnt this night. Even if I do run back, I’ll be too spent to do anything but eat a little food and go to bed. I could watch a movie if I was feeling really, really ambitious.

She sat down in the grass and looked out at Lake Michigan. The Lake was having a busy day. She could see a fair amount of waves and ripples on its surface a ways out. The water lapped the shore a little more rapidly than normal. It might even make a little splash and spray on the sideboards of the boats she could see in dock.

Alicia began to do her stretches. Her injuries acted up if she didn’t take care of herself.

Maybe I’ll do spinning classes, she thought? And yoga? Maybe I’ll start swimming again? Alicia was not the sort of girl who would give up exercise. Three years, though, and it was time for a change.

Before long and an older woman, a little heavier, brown hair not at all like Alicia’s blonde head, power walked along the trail back the way Alicia had come. Some impulse grabbed the younger girl and she hopped up and started power walking alongside the woman.

“Do you mind if I walk with you?” Alicia asked.

The woman swung four pound walking weights in her hands as she went, “Sure honey,” she said. “whatever you like. What’s your name?”

“Alicia.”

“Mine’s Gertrude Hansel. Pleased to meet you.”

Alicia was impressed the woman could power walk and talk at the same time.

“How long have you been out today, Ms. Hansel?” Alicia asked.

“Gertrude, sweetie. Or ‘Trude. That’s what the kids call me. ‘Trude. I been going about a half hour I guess.”

“I just gave up running!” Alicia announced. Something about Gertrude sort of made her feel like announcing things without a segue, like kids do.

“Little figure like yours, knew you had to do something. Isn’t this walking too easy for you?”

“I sort of ran too far today, Trude. It was a little foolish. I don’t mind walking back. I just gave it up.”

“Terrible on your knees, you know. Running. Nice legs like yours, you don’t want surgery on them.”

Alicia just smiled at Trude.

“How long you been out?” Gertrude asked.

“About an hour and a half. I was stretching.”

“And you just gave up running?”

“Gave it up!” She said it like she’d been off cigarettes a year without the patch or anything.

“Well…”

“What do you do for a living, Trude?” Alicia asked her.

“You’ll think I sound crazy.”

“Shoot.”

“I’m a building contractor. I’m your classic, middle aged housewife, except I specialize in retrofitting old industrial spaces for modern, commercial or residential useage.”

Alicia smiled again. “You don’t mind me just joining you like this, right? I have a long way to go back home. You might want the solitude.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right. Walking and talking gives the workout a little extra edge.”

The sun was waxing but it wouldn’t be dark a while yet. The Chicago skyline rose up steady to one side of her and Lake Michigan rocked and roiled at the other. She felt like she was walking the thread between stability and flux and she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind at all. There was solid ground, mostly, along the thread. There was solid ground, mostly, on the either side of it, too. And if she went too far to one side, she already knew how to swim.

People dashed all about on roller blades and skateboards, flying kites and having picnics. Everyone, everything unfolded. Three weeks ago when Alicia first had the notion of giving up running, she thought maybe she would be letting someone down. It took three weeks for her to realize that she had needed running. Did runners need her? Runners did not need her.

It’s cool. She thought. It’s cool. All the guilt she felt about giving it up dissolved inside her and she felt the release. She thought she had permission from her family, the gods maybe, from whoever some part of her thought it might matter to, so long as she kept her heart rate up.