There’s No Place Like Home
If you like to run the marathon on a fairly regular basis, chances are you get around a bit.
Training has put well over 25,000 kilometres on my kicks over the past decade or so. But I’ve racked up far more than that getting to and from marathons.
I’ve run in cities I’ve loved a very long time: New York and Philadelphia – where I spent part of my summers as a kid at my grandmother’s house. The lure now is that my uncle lives a nice walk from the start and finish in Philly.
There were trips to new favourite cities: Boston (seven times and counting), Chicago and Los Angeles, where I placed third among Canadians back in 2007. A very slow field, indeed. Still I was quick enough to take advantage of those free massages – without waiting in line.
Add to the mix were races in cities that were never on any must-see lists I’ve kept: Erie, Pa. and Columbus, Ohio, where I ran the marathon of my life.
And then there’s Athens. The original marathon route that starts in the town the event is named after. I got the chance to run through the streets of the city where my mother was born and finished the race in the stadium that was built for the first modern-day Olympics.
While those miles on the road may have been some of the most exciting of my life, it’s the ones that got me there that mean the most.
As Dorothy said when she tapped together the heels of her ruby runners in that wizard f lick, “there’s no place like home.”
There is no better way to get to know your neighbourhood than to run it. When we first moved into our house two years ago, I thought that the neighbourhood offered little more than less expensive (for Toronto) housing, a string of cheap motels that boasted “colour TV” and rates by the hour – and used car lots that didn’t appear to be selling any cars. But I was wrong. True, there are sections that evoke the area that spawned Bob and Doug MacKenzie, replete with pick-up trucks that seem intent on picking off runners. But I also discovered well-treed side streets that offered relief from the sun and roundabout routes to the paths along Lake Ontario that took me through pockets that I never would have found.
Even residential streets where you might be lucky enough to spot deer strolling at dawn and dusk, nibbling their way through the neighbour’s gardens.
I got to know my neighbourhood intimately.
I know how your front yard landscaping project is progressing, which license plates belong on your street and whether or not that truck that’s backed into your driveway while you’re on vacation really should be there.
Think of me as your mobile neighbourhood watch.
It’s not a job I expected to take on when I got into t his long dist ance r unning habit , but it ’s one t hat I’ve grown to relish. Even when errant pick-up trucks come after me.