The Fragility of the Life-Run Balance by Gill Hunter

The Fragility of the Life-Run Balance

by Gill Hunter

Several years ago, I quit running because I started writing. I was in graduate school at Purdue University (Boiler Up!) and starting my dissertation. I had been running off and on for several years, never really seriously, and mostly as a brief diversion from the hours of reading required by a doctorate in literature. I reached my breaking point, though, when I started the dissertation. Every mile made me flinch as I thought, “that’s another page I could have written.” So I backed off, then quit altogether.

The good news is that the writing continued: I finished the dissertation and have the tenure track job teaching college English that we all wanted. But that something gained was unfortunately added to: thirty pounds I hadn’t had before, points on my cholesterol score (come to find out cholesterol’s like golf – the lower your score the better). The something lost – fitness, health, work-life balance – nagged at me. The dissertation-forced break from running became prolonged. I settled in. I was (and still am) very happily married, with two stepdaughters who kept (and keep) me active and filled with joy. For three years I stayed settled in that way.

In other ways I was unsettled, though, and on Christmas Day 2009 I started running again. Just like in every story you’ve heard about starting running, or returning to running, I started slow and kept it short. I wanted to go farther, but really couldn’t. I wanted to go faster – and I think I used to – but couldn’t, and pretty much still can’t. But I ran. I know why I did it, and I’m proud of why I did it, and I know the difference it’s made, to me and, surprisingly, to others. And that difference it’s made is the story I love to share.

First of all, I run because God told me to. Just before Christmas Day 2009, the preacher at my church – my wife’s brother – resigned in order to move and plant a new church. As we struggled to accept his decision, I felt a pull to start a “movement ministry” at our church. I wanted to include – and create – runners and walkers, and I convinced several to join me for some Saturday morning jaunts, a couple charity walks, and a few 5k races. But most of these folks didn’t share my call to run, and I found myself showing up for races and going out for runs alone. So my impetus shifted slightly, and I began to look for ways to build community at races, and among racers, and between friends who didn’t go to my church but were inspired to run. Four half marathons (with a fifth coming at the end of March), a handful of 10k’s, countless 5k’s, a Warrior Dash and a Tough Mudder later, both my community and my motivation are strong.

The rest of that story, then, is the impact running has had on the rest of my life, including, importantly, my teaching. It took very little time to discover that I’m not a talented, or even a good, runner. But I have no trouble now, after three years of mostly productive and always-inspired running, describing myself as committed. The same can be said of my teaching. I’m in my seventeenth year. I’ve followed a winding road that has included a jail, two high schools, and three college campuses, and that has always entertained and along which I’ve strengthened myself through determined perseverance rather than sheer brilliance. Early in every semester I stand before my students and declare to them that I’m no expert. I let them know, instead, that I’m just really interested in the content of a class, in how learning happens, and in them as individuals. This is probably not the stance college professors ordinarily take, as a doctorate might suggest expertise, and classes, maybe stereotypically, indifference. I’m not sure whether running caused my mindset or not, and I don’t know if it’s humility or what, but I much prefer to sit beside my students, to work with them, to understand how they think, what they prefer, how they’re growing and how they see themselves, to standing up in front of a class and acting like I have all the information they want. We slog through the tough stuff together and celebrate when we reach the finish line.

Some of my favorite moments are those few minutes before a class begins, when a small number of students have arrived and we’re waiting for the rest to trickle in. I know what these students do for fun, because I ask them. One reason I ask, I admit, is for the quid-pro-quo of it, so that I can tell them about a race I just ran or have coming up, or explain why one day’s hill repeats make me sorry the next day’s class meets on the fourth floor, or marvel at the way the sun broke through the clouds at exactly the moment I set out for my run the day before. I know some of my students run, too, and sometimes I’ll see them at a race, or hear about their time spent on the track, or check out their new shoes. For these students, and eventually the rest, running becomes a shared metaphor: the semester is a marathon not a sprint; there will be hurdles to be overcome; we spend a lot more time training than we do racing; we have to stretch ourselves in order to get stronger.

I love my job. I mostly teach British and Irish literature and classes for pre-service teachers. The content of these courses – Dickens, Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Heaney and others in the literature; pedagogy, writing instruction, assessment, reflection, even the Common Core in the classes for education majors – is stuff I love to talk about and the kind of reading I do for pleasure, not just work. Similarly, I love to run. I love that I can run, and I enjoy thinking about it, reading about it and, because I can’t help it, talking about it (which is why I have to often insist to my wife, my most available audience, that I’m not obsessed). My running is best when I approach it the same way I do my job, as an academic and a physical thing. I run or cross-train nearly every day. I stretch most days. I eat way, way better than I used to. And my bookshelves are growing crowded. Arthur Lydiard and Jack Daniels (a little tough to explain to college students exactly who he is) deserve spots next to Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Each author helps me understand how to push myself, how to embrace difficulty, and how to get the most out of life. In the same way, Born to Run and Running with the Kenyans and What I Talk about When I Talk About Running belong with Wondrous Words and In The Middle and Write Beside Them. They all rely on rich experiences, include unforgettable stories, connect to the mystical, and blend the highest of theory with the most practical of application. So, they do what teachers do.

Maybe there’s a class in there somewhere. But I’m no expert.