To run in Asheville was to run hills. As my neighbor, a cyclist, put it, “I can’t pedal down my driveway without starting a 1000-foot climb.”
A plainsmen by birth, I knew the wind, but I knew no incline. Slowly, I adapted, developing a collection of hill-conquering strategies, most of which centered around not looking up. Except for one: catching the falling leaves as they drifted past me. I think I found this so enjoyable and distracting because it reminded me of a simpler time from childhood, where I didn’t have to run three miles to get physical activity. I didn’t catch many leaves—maybe three over two years—but I kept climbing and tried to remind myself that running hills was better than not running at all.
I used to love running, everything about running. I read most of its literary cannon (rec: Once A Runner). Running was the first thing that was really my thing. Not my parents’ thing because they thought I’d be good at it. Not my friends’ thing because they said it was cool. My thing. I used to wear a medical bracelet so that if I was hit by a car while running and required hospitalization, the physicians would know I had type 1 diabetes and restart my insulin. Under the snakes and staff symbol I had a quote inscribed: “Join the Divine”. My running mantra.
I was 23. One can see how, by age 33, I was a psychiatrist.
Six weeks before medical school, I ran a marathon in Montana when I probably shouldn’t have, on a left hamstring that hadn’t fully healed from a previous marathon. I started medical school and didn’t run much for the following six years. The hamstring wouldn’t heal. It wasn’t until I started running in Asheville—and uncoincidentally, was not practicing medicine anymore—that I began to trust my body enough to run consistently.
Yesterday afternoon, back in the plains, I ran up a “hill” in our neighborhood. The slush was slick, so I glanced up to find a path through the ice and snow. A blur flew into my peripheral vision. My left hand snatched upward reflexively. When my hand opened, it held a leaf. And I was atop the hill.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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