Broken Hearts, Broken Tendons, Set to Music
So-called “experts” in running barefoot suggest starting slowly. “Take an inaugural jog around the block,” advise all the runner websites. “Then stop. The next day, run three or four blocks. Then stop.” The alternative is a graduate course in howling pain, as your tendons stretch and strain and finally rip apart.
Snap.
Crackle.
The Friday my Vibram FiveFingers arrived in the mail, I ignored all that sage advice. Starting slowly is for beginners, went my humble reasoning, and I’ve been running long distances for years. I slipped on the foot-gloves, wiggling each toe into its individual nylon pocket, and stood to marvel at the newness of the experience. Walking outside, the ultra-thin soles allowed me to feel things that people wearing conventional shoes could not: the icy waffle of a manhole cover, the cracks in every sidewalk panel.
In my defense, I did pause after my initial trot around the block. I checked the sides and bottom of my new footwear for any chunks of glass or gravel. I flexed my calves and knees. Obviously, it was time to leap ahead. I was definitely ready for a long jaunt around the nearby park, I thought to myself.
Patience has never been my strong suit.
The first four miles blurred past. My freed toes gripped the cold pavement. My legs settled into a machinelike churn. My breathing and heartbeat were steady. Start slowly? Whatever, I thought. This is amaz —
And then my left foot’s tendons, worked beyond their limits, decided to perform their best impersonation of an overstretched rubber band.
Pop.
Eight weeks earlier, on her way out the door, my ex left me a breakup mix. This was back when people curated songs, assembled them into playlists, and burned them onto CDs. Such a ritual feels antique in retrospect, even if it wasn’t that long ago. The list included: “Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart,” by Johnny Cash; “Every Day I Love You Less and Less,” by Kaiser Chiefs; “Tainted Love,” by Marilyn Manson; “Not Crying,” by Flight of the Concords; “Your Woman,” by White Town; “When You Were Mine,” by Prince; “Against All Odds,” by The Postal Service; “Goodbye,” by Steve Earle; and “Everything You Know Is Wrong,” by Weird Al Yankovic.
Our relationship had defined itself through music shared, swapped, debated. Gillian Welch and Hyper Blynn provided our weekend soundtracks, along with the click of Scrabble tiles and the dog’s paws on hardwood.
You’re not going to be stupid about this, I told myself, even as I engaged in that gateway drug of stupid post-breakup behavior—namely, staring out the window at a streetscape of wintery slush as Cash and company wailed their broken hearts out.
The mix warbled to an end, letting in a silence like black water. I turned and considered the wine rack. Some dead relationships leave craters demanding to be filled with the vice of your choosing. Any trashed idiot can rest their forehead against the comforting glow of a dive-bar jukebox, fishing in their pockets for enough quarters to play the Stones’ “Miss You” for the 10th time. That wasn’t going to be me.
Instead, I upped my running mileage, figuring that every hour pounding the trails around the park was time spent active, productive, and most of all, not engaged in anything close to self-pity. I ran three nights a week, passing sprinters and joggers and helmeted ladies ambling on horseback. For the first time since high school, I began jotting down my times and route mileage, the number of runners I passed along the way.
“Giving you a breakup mix is strange,” a friend told me. “I’d go find other waters to fish in, but that’s me.”
“I’m already over her,” I’d say. Wincing at the dull ache in my legs, I swallowed two aspirin with a swig of lukewarm black coffee: breakfast of champions. “I’ve moved on. Doing really great.”
“It’s okay if you’re not. You’re allowed to take these things slow,” she sighed. “Much as you’d like to be Iron Man.”
“Nope, I am absolutely good. What’s new with you?”
Running meant living in the immediacy of breath and pace, not in the past with its wreckage. I graduated to four nights a week, then five, and sometimes six. My toenails broke and my toe-skin split and spotted my socks red. Long-dormant hip and knee injuries awoke with a squeal of bone. I beat my 5k and 10k and 10-mile bests, and still I pushed for longer distances, faster times.
With my mileage creeping toward 35 miles a week, I discovered a new problem: The running had become rote. I started pounding away the miles on autopilot, while my memories drifted—inevitably—in the direction of my ex. Then, one night, I caught myself crafting a mix of my own, complete with songs like Tom Waits’ “Shore Leave.” I realized, then, that I needed something new to consume me.
The minimalist running trend was started, in large part, by the bestselling book Born to Run. Author Christopher McDougall details the Tarahumara Indians’ lives spent running barefoot, seemingly without much injury or angst, around their home territory of Mexico’s Copper Canyon.
The trend caught on in my particular enclave of Brooklyn, which seems to worship anything organic and esoteric and maybe a little dangerous—at least in a way you can joke about with your friends over a soy latte. I noted other runners gliding past me in nylon foot-gloves by Vibram and Terra Plana, or the super-flexible Nike Free. They made moving through space seem light and effortless.
It seemed like a trend I could embrace, if only because it demanded a learning curve. When running barefoot, the balls of the feet tend to hit the ground first, as opposed to conventional shoes that emphasize the heel-strike. Acclimating to a new stride is no easy feat.
“I ordered a pair of Vibram FiveFingers,” I instant messaged my former editor.
“What’s that? Those hideous shoes?”
“People will think I’ve gone absolutely barking mad,” I replied, a little gleeful, “I’m such a big heel-striker when I walk/run. I’m sure the first couple days will be odd, re: stride adjustment.”
After that, I would build back to my old distances and times. Nothing like an epic quest, requiring all your concentration and a little blood, to distract you from picking through love’s smoking ruins.
Two days later, midway through my overly ambitious first run, my left foot lent a dose of reality to the situation. Pop.
Cursing under my breath, I managed to drag my throbbing limb up Battle Pass and across the Long Meadow to my home, where I applied enough ice to hole the Titanic.
Once on the couch, I flexed the injured foot and winced and tried to convince myself it would be okay—in a few weeks. The prospect of not running felt like a minor apocalypse, nearly as unacceptable as not breathing. I lay there, trying to become comfortable with the room’s humming silence, wondering if the time had come to uncork a bottle.
Two weeks passed, and I limped back to my apartment to find an email waiting for me. My ex had gifted me a song from iTunes—“I Don’t Want to Get Over You,” by The Magnetic Fields—and included a note: “Sitting here listening to your mixes. Keep thinking about you. This isn’t healthy.”
Of course she would reach out with a song.
I clicked play and listened to The Magnetic Fields sing about clove cigarettes and loss. I realized this was the bonus track to our breakup: the ironic admittance, via Stephin Merritt’s dour baritone, that the whole situation was wrecked beyond repair. This wasn’t exactly news to me. But at least I had learned one lesson from the whole mess.
Shutting down my laptop, I bent and eased into the foot-gloves for the first time since my disastrous first run. My tendons flared in warning. I stood and placed weight on my left foot. It seemed okay. I took a step toward the door. That seemed okay too. I walked into the hallway, believing I could run by the time I made it to the street, so long as I limited myself to a single loop around the block. You’re allowed to take things slow, I told myself.
Broken Hearts, Broken Tendons, Set to Music
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