Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement
6B

I 

don’t remember when I fell 
in love with running. I cannot 
remember my first run or my 

first pair of running sneakers. Early 
on, I recall equating running to a 
mundanity, something I did to stay in 
shape and keep active as an incredibly 
uncoordinated individual who failed 
when it came to team sports. As a child, 
I hadn’t discovered the runner’s high 
or that sweaty addiction. But between 
cross country camps and routing solo 
long distance Sunday mornings, running 
turned into a part of my daily life — a part 
of who I am. I went from being a person 
who ran, to a runner. I never had the 
grace or the long legs or the innate talent 
as an athlete, but I had the drive. As I 
recognized the onset of anxiety in my 
early teenage years, I found that running 
quelled my anxiety the way nothing else 
seemed to. 

Though I don’t remember the impetus 

to begin, I do remember my mother 
dropping me off to middle school cross 
country practice in 2008, me with 
unlaced mud-caked sneakers holding 
a water bottle, wet with condensation. 
I remember my first five mile race, 
11 years old, looping the roads of my 
hometown, the longest I felt I’d run in 
my life. I remember the near unending, 
heat soaked runs I took in St. Louis two 
summers ago, the 100 degree sun tanning 
my sunscreened shoulders as my legs 
willed another five, six, seven miles. I 
remember the first time I ran 15 miles, 
with my brother trailing me in a beach 

cruiser bike, down a New Jersey beach 
adjacent sidewalk in August. I remember 
rounding the final corner of the Detroit 
Marathon, a finish line of red and blue 
balloons swaying against a freezing, navy 
October Michigan sky. 

I remember falling deeper down the 

rabbithole of near dependency on such 
meditative movement, when I moved 
to Michigan as a college freshman and 
strained to hang on to some part of home 
within my new routine. Somewhere in 
the midst of paper bibs pinned to pink 
athletic shirts, roads and miles and paths 
and ankle injuries and Gatorade bottles 
and pairs of sneakers, I fell in love. I 
became addicted to the golden flush 
behind my cheeks as I finished a blissful 
jog, runner’s high radiating through me. 
I’m addicted to the sweat, the thrill, the 
motion. I’ll never stop. 
R

unning has always been a 
solace, a safe space where I 
can sort out my thoughts, an 

invisible place that helps me find answers 
to complex questions and scenarios that 
seem murky or impossible to untangle. 
Running has steadied my breath when I 
feel like I can’t inhale; it puts unsettling 
emotions 
at 
ease 
and 
consistently 

reminds me to remain grounded in times 
of tribulation. It’s been a form of moving 
therapy since I can remember, a method of 
calming panic when I’m anxious. There’s 
something about the repetition, resolve 
and regularity that has rendered running 
a constant in my life — an activity to fall 
back on in times of uncertainty. 

It is through running, specifically after 

completing the 2018 Detroit Marathon, 
that I’ve learned to have an unabashed 
appreciation for my body, in the short, 
muscular legs I’ve always detested. 
They’ve carried me, according to the 
Nike+ running application I sometimes 
use to track my outdoor running distance, 
935 miles in the last year. Anytime I feel 
stressed about schoolwork or my future 
or a relationship, I lace up my sneakers 
and I take to the road.

With wind in my face and concrete 

under my feet, I have the ability to choose 
— to turn left or right, to stop and look out 
at a body of water, to focus on everything 
or nothing, to slow down and to speed 
up. If I slink out of my childhood home 
before 8 a.m., as my parents and brothers 
sleep, the roads are quiet, devoid of car 
engines, and the air smells of salt water. 
If I wait until after 4 p.m. to chase 
golden hour, the neighborhood smells 
of dinnertime and the inaugural use of 
barbecue grills. As I traverse familiar 
streets and head toward the beach, I pass 
handfuls of other runners and podcast 

walkers, people with this mutual 
affinity for the road, and we smile at 

one another, lifting a sweat-slicked hand 
in acknowledgement. We connect in the 
way you can with strangers handling a 
circumstance the same way. 
I

t’s no surprise then, with the 
onset of pandemic COVID-19 and 
physical isolation, I found myself 

looking forward to and welcoming 
consistent outdoors runs. When the 
University 
of 
Michigan 
closed 
the 

Central Campus Recreation Building 
and the Intramural Sports Building 
after canceling in-person classes and 
transitioning online for precautionary 
measures, I was forced from my winter 
treadmill routine to the streets of Ann 
Arbor. With the spring weather just 
starting to show, I had no complaints. On 
rainy or colder days, with nothing else to 
do, I waited for the best moment — when 
the sun peeked out or the sky temporarily 
dried up — to leave the house with no 
determined path or plan except to run 
until I couldn’t anymore. 

Many students, trapped in the house 

with roommates or family, feel the same 
tug to running outdoors.

Lana 
Wolf, 
a 
junior 
at 
Cornell 

University and a New Jersey native, has 
picked up running as a part of her daily 
routine since COVID-19 dispeled her 
from her college campus. Never a regular 
runner in the past, Wolf is now running 
near every day and said, “There’s 
something special about running right 
now and being in nature exercising … 
seeing families playing in their yard and 
other people out exercising — I just feel 

like I’m part of a community.” 

I feel similarly in the undefinable 

comfort of distant connection, especially 
in a time where I go hours and even 
days only meeting the eyes of my 
immediate family members. Even when 
the infrastructure of our country shakes 
and crumbles, our overarching sense 
of community remains firm — we’re 
all navigating a disconcerting time in 
our nation’s history, we all need ways 
to cope. Being quarantined with my 
15-year-old cousin, a runner herself, 
has had a tremendous influence on our 
relationship. At least three times a week, 
we run side by side, talking each other 
through our current circumstances. 

The ungovernable and unmanageable 

emotional toll that COVID-19 has taken 
on so many of us leaves us craving some 
way to have a semblance of routine or 
sovereignty over our lives. 

Olivia Kem, a senior at Santa Clara 

University and Phoenix, AZ native, was 
a semi-regular runner before quarantine 
and has found herself much more drawn 
to the activity with the dawn of social 
distancing. She has upped both the 
mileage and frequency of her running 
since the pandemic altered daily life. 

“I realized that a huge reason I enjoy 

running is because it gives me something 
that I can control and improve on. I can 
push myself to go a little farther or a little 
faster everyday and this is something 
no one can take away from me,” she 
said, “This is especially important now 
when it feels like everything in my life is 
controlled by COVID-19. I did not realize 
until now how much I value this control. 
Running has also given me the motivation 
to get out of bed early in the morning to 
beat the Phoenix heat, which has also 
helped me stay sane by providing me 
with a sense of purpose each morning.” 

Since I moved back home to quarantine 

nearly three weeks ago, I’ve noticed a 
large increase in the amount of runners 
in my neighborhood. Running has gone 
from a pastime some people in my town 
enjoyed, to a hobby dozens of people 
have picked up. Workout studios and 
gyms have temporarily closed, leaving 
people without a way to release stress 
through exercise. Largely in part due to 
my own infatuation with running, and 
my giddy desire that everyone find the 
same solace I feel when running, I am 
ecstatic to see people eagerly jumping on 
the runner train, and their newfound — 
or reinvigorated — love for running. 

Read more at 
 
MichiganDaily.com

Running through quarantine

BY ELI RALLO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT