On having to walk

A few years ago, I injured my right hip flexor pretty badly. I’m not sure how, exactly; I think I overextended it in a yoga class, a danger for the hyperflexible, I guess.

In any case, I painfully limped my way through several months. Having an injury that affects your walking is always bad, but it’s especially bad when your entire life consists of commuting on foot, logging 3-4 miles a day just doing normal stuff. Relief finally came in the form of an acupuncturist, but on a bad day I can still feel it a little.

I’m telling you this because this winter, I decided I wanted to run the Brooklyn Half-Marathon, which happens at the end of April. I’ve lost count of how many half-marathons I’ve run in the last decade. In February 2021, I successfully ran a solo half-marathon that I’d been training for all fall out of the need to have some kind of structure to my life outside of work. And I did it carefully, training slowly and integrating yoga every day, and I didn’t get any injuries. I was very happy about this.

But about a month ago, I started to feel my right hamstring again, and soon the flexor started feeling stiff and tight and a little dully painful. Not pain, but just the feeling that pain was on the way.

So I called it off. Not just this half, but, I think, my decade-long, profoundly mediocre but still satisfying running career, marked by a lot of winter miles and several instances of running through cracked ribs (not fun!) and huge fluctuations in speed. My knees have slowly started to warn me that this is a bad idea. When I was a sprightly 28-year-old, I was running around 8-minute miles. By last month, I was maybe hitting 11 minutes. I’m carrying around a lot more weight now than I was back then, and that adds up to being slower and also more injury-prone. It was time.

So now I walk. And I love walking. A five-mile stroll around Prospect Park with a coffee and an audiobook is my idea of peace, just watching all the people and their puppies and their tiny kids and the bikers and the strange goofballs you only encounter wandering around Prospect Park. It takes longer, but on the other hand, I’m a fast walker, and five miles takes 80 minutes. Three is 45. And I don’t get sweaty and miserable.

Still, as any runner can tell you — no matter how mediocre they were — there’s a special satisfaction that comes from running, the feeling that you worked really hard and you deserve this rest. Running five miles feels far more effective than walking those five, even though they are, in effect, exactly the same as far as health benefits. Without a strict running regimen, I have started weight training again, four days a week, something my body is really well built for. (Thank you to my German ancestors, I think.) But while I don’t think I ever experienced the mystical runner’s high, I don’t feel quite the same bone-weary satisfaction after picking up and putting down heavy things. I hope that will change with time.

Walking, though, is good for a writer. Time to think (even with a podcast going), time to ramble mentally and let the soul rest a little.

This summer in Paris, Tom and I are teaching a two-week class with our study-abroad students on the flâneur — as philosopher, as artist, as observer of the world. Paris is the perfect place to think about the stroller, the person who lingers and loiters and delights in simply watching people and loving their oddities and their weirdnesses. Having to walk is reacquainting me with my flâneurian tendencies, away from running’s tunnel vision and toward rambling attention.

Attention, they say, is the highest form of love.

Been writing

• Well, the Oscars turned out to be quite a time! But I didn’t write about The Incident (and didn’t have to, because everyone else was).

• Instead I wrote about how CODA managed to pull off a Best Picture win. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should! It’s really sweet and gentle and, dare I say it, a tad uplifting. (It’s on the streaming service Apple TV+, and it’s also re-releasing in theaters, so check local listings.)

• And I wrote, with some palpable irritation, about the folly of turning the Oscars into sponsored content.

Been reading and watching

• I am reading an advance copy of Sloane Crosley’s novel Cult Classic, out June 7. It’s wonderfully bizarre. I’m loving it.

• Also reading this profile of Robert Eggers, director of The Witch and The Lighthouse, esoterica nerd, and one of the most interesting people I’ve ever interviewed. I’m seeing his upcoming film The Northman tomorrow night, and I can’t wait.

• This week we watched a bunch of movies, but the most notable might be Unfriended, which I’d never seen and which properly freaked us both out. I’ve been writing about the Internet on film — look for the article this week — and this was part of that work.

• I know there are piles of great TV shows out there, but I regret to say that we have been spending our time finishing Dexter: New Blood, as the sort of fans who know exactly how stupid it all is but can’t quite quit it. It’s not the worst ending I’ve ever seen? Better finale to the whole saga than the original one.

Odds and ends

• I made this for a party last night and it was so good.

• Also, this is going to become a recurring refrain: my book Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women is out June 28, and you could wait till then to get your copy. But! Pre-orders really help drum up interest and encourage booksellers to stock the book, which in turn helps it sell after the release date. So if you are so inclined/able, I’d love it if you pre-ordered! Preferably through Bookshop or your local independent bookseller.

Enjoyed this? If you’re feeling it, I won’t object if you buy me a cup of coffee. Writers need fuel.