run

Week Four, Day 1

Tuesday, August 1st, 2023

Ok. Nobody panic. Everybody remain calm. But I think, after many botched attempts and false starts, it’s finally happening. I, Allyson Marie Bonino, am going to the beach. I know. I know. I’ve said it before, and now I’ve lost your trust in this respect, but it is happening, and I will take a photo to prove it. Blessed be for your girl was feeling parched. 

I have to say, un-beach related but also related to the fact that I’m going, it is an interesting thing integrating this running into my schedule. I felt it on Saturday with my trip to Ikea, this sort of holding one’s self accountable to the routine while also being like, but what if I just did it later? I am, by nature, a highly organized and schedule-driven individual. Give me a color-coded Google calendar to situate and a glass of red zin, and my endorphins spike. Unstructured free time, to me, is a curse word. Always has been. And, honestly, it’s probably one of the reasons I started this little project. This has given me something to fill my time; see many of my bullet points from earlier #nomoreYA #exceptfortwilight. It hasn’t been too hard because there really is not much in my life going on outside of the few social engagements I have, but the weird thing is that I feel myself prioritizing these runs, she wrote as she began to wonder if she was, in fact, becoming something of a runner?! ::shudder shudder, wince wince:: But it’s true. I don’t want to do them later, necessarily. Not because I think I won’t actually do them, but it has been nice to feel some kind of pattern emerging in my days. Again, structure all of my time and I am a happy girl. But then, with days like this, where there is an activity that is going to take up a good chunk of my day, these are the days that are throwing me a little bit. 

So, right now, it’s 8:30 in the morning, and I’m trying to suss out when I do this run. Here is where my head is at, I’m of a few minds. I could: 

A) run now
B) run at the beach 
C) run later 

Easy, right? Just pick one? Well, how’s about instead you step into the spiral vegetti slicer that is my brain and unravel these options? 

A) run now – I could. I’ve never done a morning run. The closest I came was back in college when I did the almost-run of the Brooklyn Bridge and we all know how that turned out. I’m not a morning person necessarily, but I’m also not not a morning person. Meaning that when you have insomnia, the construct of morning person, night owl, healthy sleeper all sort of get muddled and mashed together and lose any real meaning. I am super good at functioning on low levels of sleep because my body has trained for it – there’s a metaphor in there for running that I am choosing to ignore, thank you very much – so I’m actually very awake right now. Or rather, my mind feels wide awake, hence how I’ve literally just “awakened,” again, another construct that means something different in the world of insomnia, and am spewing all of this out, but my body is another story. Where my brain is active and ready to go literally any hour of the day, my body feels the physical lack of sleep nourishment. I try to do my workouts in the morning, but only after I’ve been up for a bit and my body has had the time to physically catch up. 

• Also, apparently, I left my sneakers in our bedroom, which I never do, so they greeted me as I got out of bed just now, and I’m like, is it a sign?

• Yeah, they don’t usually live here. A sign? 

• Pros – you get it out of the way and then have the whole day to not worry about it 
• Cons- I don’t know that I’m awake enough for it to be an impactful or meaningful run

B) run at the beach – now this is honestly a VERY intriguing prospect. There is a running/bike path there that I saw when we were thwarted a few weeks ago. Let’s just dive into the pros and cons because I could wax poetical about the beach for pages on end, and that’s not why you’re here. And if it is why you’re here….I’m sorry? I feel the tintiest but complicit in maybe giving you that impression, but this is called Run, not Beach.

• Pros: it’s flat, the views, love me that salty salty sea air, I could jump into the ocean after to cool down
• Cons: I don’t love the idea of looking at my friends and being like, “cool, I’m just going to go do this run real quick, bye”; I would be breaking one of my cardinal rules, which is you do not bring closed-toed shoes to the beach¹. 

C) run later – yeah, this isn’t happening because the beach makes you tired, and I’m going to be plum pooped by the end of the day, so no. No pros. Only cons. 

I think I’m going to go now. And by think, I mean I’m going now. Get it out of the way and then have the whole day to chill and vibe and soak up the sun. Sounds good to me. 

And if you think I’m not wearing my bathing suit for this run, think again: 

So sleepy, yes, but they say dress for the job you want, and if Barbie taught us anything, it’s that you can have the job of Beach. Consider this my application. 

POST-RUN MOTRUM 

Running Time: 31:30  Minutes 

Distance Achieved: 2.14 miles 

Tunage: Coldplay Mylo Xyloto 

Running Milestone Unlocked: Jogged the warmup!!

Ok, so morning time is when a lot of people run. Did you know that? I didn’t know that. Alright, maybe I did know that, but I chose to ignore it for a very long time. Listen, I get it though. That was kind of lovely. It was cool and breezy, and it went by faster than I thought, and now I have the whole day to fuck around and find out, know what I mean? 

Today was our longest run to date, and when I opened the app, Runicorn told me that I would be running half of a 5K today, which I did surpass, so that felt good. And also, it’s good to know in terms of where I should be in this process. I kind of wish he said stuff like this more, and am wondering now if perhaps the other mascots say more about this? Like, does Sgt. Block just scream at you if you’re behind? Does the specter of Billie slap your ass and tell you to get a move on? 

I am also proud of myself for doing that warmup jog! When it started, Runicorn was like, “ok, let’s warm up with a light jog,” and I’m not going to lie to you, it felt like a personal attack, right? It was early, parts of my body were still asleep, and I had already crossed the street to start up this steadily steep hill. But then the beat dropped from my Cold-Bros, and I took a breath, and I pushed off. This is the thing I’m finding; there is no one pushing me but me. I mean, there’s Runicorn, and I take nothing away from his sparkly rainbow power, but I could turn him off, tune him out. Every day that I choose to run, into it or not, it is me making that decision. 

Which is why I think I’m feeling a little bit frustrated right now. 

I can’t seem to get past this 2.1-ish mile range. I’m stuck there, and it’s, I don’t know, it’s not bothering me, but like, it’s not not bothering me either. I’ve been doing this for four weeks now, right? And I don’t know that I’m improving. And that is super fucking frustrating to the Type A Control Freak™️² that I am. My friend Sharone and I always say that we play games we know we can win, which is true in many facets of my life. It’s for sure a survival mechanism deeply rooted in past trauma, I know that, but it’s true. I engage with things I know that I’m good at, which is why I yeeted my graphing calculator far away from me the second I knew I didn’t need it for anything real in life. I start what I know I can finish.

Does it keep me from doing things outside my comfort zone? Yes and no. There are things that I will try, but I would be lying to you if, in the back of my mind, there wasn’t some small voice that was encouraging me on, knowing that it was achievable. I never want to seem incompetent or lacking or less than or, god forbid, like a lazy fat person out of her depth. Which is something I think about all the time. It’s why I force myself to be the best at anything I do. It’s why when I perform on stage, I’m performing at the highest possible level. Because if I’m anything less than extraordinary, you could look at me and be like, “Ugh, what is she doing? Doesn’t she know she’s fat?” To which I reply with a full-throated HA HA YEAH BISH THAT’S WHY I’M DOING THIS SPECIFIC THING SO YOU CAN’T SAY THAT TO ME, and yes of course I know I’m fat. Do you really think that’s something I’m ever not thinking about? But it’s why I chose running and not something absolutely crazy like cross-fit or pull-ups. My chin was never meant to know the top of a bar. It just wasn’t. So yeah, I do what I know I can win. And right now, I feel like I’m not winning? Or, ugh, I don’t know. I shouldn’t be looking at this in the binary of winning and losing, I guess. Every article I’ve read about mindset and running and blah blah blah tells me that it’s not about numbers. It’s not about winning anything, BUT THEN WHY DO THEY GIVE MEDALS OUT, you know?!?!? And why do I want one so badly?! 

Well, ok, I can actually answer that. 

There is this competitiveness that lives inside of me. Not many people see it because I push it down and don’t let that monster with his foaming mouth and reaching, grasping, needy fingers out very often, if ever. But he is in there. And yes. This competitive monster is a he—one thousand percent. So now, if I am just running by myself, then I am in competition with myself, which is never a great place for me to be at, re my hospital stint. 

The truth is, I’m not sure I know how to do something without trying to win in some way. Which, wow, that’s kind of a shitty thing to realize, but it’s real, and it’s there, and it’s me. This person who always needs to be the best because if I’m not, then what am I? Just this sad, average, fat person. And again, you can’t be fat and average; you have to be extraordinary. Just exist in this body isn’t enough. No, I have to be the best, the brightest, funniest, smartest, which in most facets of my life is true. I can be all of those things, and then I find a certain blissful comfort inside of it. Knowing that I am achieving a level of perfection that will let me skirt by in this body. 

Is it exhausting? Yes and no. Again, like my insomnia, I think I’m so used to it that I just operate in this way all the time, I almost don’t notice it anymore. But, yeah, she’s tired. All the time.

And with running? All fucking bets are off. And it’s hard for me to be just average at this. And I think that is going to be the crux of this journey, right? Being ok with the fact that this might be an area where I am just average. 

Fuck 

I hate that. 

But also maybe there’s freedom in that? 

I don’t know. 

What I do know is that I’m going to the beach today with dear friends, and I have brownies packed in my bag that are the perfect just-above-medium-rare. I am going to soak up some sun and float on the waves and try to meditate a bit more on this need to be perfect all the time. I am going to remind myself that I am, in fact, Kenough, and that even on my worst day, there is always Beach. 

Ok. I’m rambling now. Ending these are hard sometimes. 

Here’s the picture I promised: 

Stunnin. 

1.  YOU JUST DON’T OK?! And yes, Colby Moore, love of my life, I am talking to, at, and about you specifically. Socks and sneakers have no place on sand. No place at all. ↩︎
2. New band name. I call it. ↩︎