Running in America

Goggles or sunglasses, bugspray or sunscreen, claretin, and a reflective belt. These are not the tools for a night surviving out in the wild American woods. No, they’re what a runner needs to make it through a run in the Georgian summer.

I used to think running was an easy sport. All you had to do was bring shoes and semi-appropriate attire, and you were good to go. Well, this was when I still lived in a slightly civilized part of the world. One where your greatest concern was whether or not it might start drizzling while you were out on your run. And running in wintertime here is not much different; all you really have to wonder is whether you need to bring a jacket or not. It’s summertime (which incidentally runs from mid-April to the end of September down here) that makes running a few miles not much different from going on a “survival camping trip” in, say, the Ardennes.

The first and most obvious issue is, of course, the heat. Between June 1 and now you really shouldn’t be outside exercising after nine in the morning, and if you want to run at night, it’s best to wait until about 7:30pm. Any exercise in between those hours will inadvertently leave you not only severely dehydrated and very unhappy, it will probably also leave you with a nasty sunburn (yes, the sweat will make the sunscreen simply evaporate off your body), and a pounding headache at best. So during the dogdays of July and August, I would find myself getting up impossible hours on my days off just to get my run in. I would postpone running long distances until the end of summer, since there was simply no way I was willing to get up at 4:30 in the morning to put in an 8-mile run. But, fortunately, that has gotten better now. You’re still best to stay away from exercising in the middle of the day, but you can actually sleep in until, oh, seven, before you really should get out there and do your thing.

And when you're out running here in the dark, you immediately notice one huge difference between Georgia and the rest of world; the lack of streetlights. We have very few streetlights in our area. A feat I usually applaud, as it allows me to look at the stars, but when I trip over another loose piece of concrete for the third time during one run, I can't help but curse the county commissioner, or the city counselor, or whoever is in charge of lights. This doesn't only mean that you can't really see where you're going, it also means cars won't see you. Not even if you're dressed in all white with reflectors on your shoes. Nope. People here are so completely utterly not used to seeing another person on the road who is not in a car, you will scare the living daylights out of them when they see you. If they do. Hence the reflective belt. And if you're taking a dog, put one on her too.

So why the claretin, the bugspray, and the goggles? Well, one word: bugs. Nasty ones. Big musquitoes and yellow flies that leave welts the size of quarters. And gnats. Nasty little hard-shelled bugs that fly into your mouth, eyes, and nostrils. And do so especially whenever you’re near trees, or when running at night. So if you want shade, or want to run when it’s cool, you need to be prepared to run with the bugs. Now I don’t mind a few bugs here and there, but when it got to the point where I found myself swallowing more bugs than I could count, I decided it was time fors ome serious action. Claretin. Claretin (or Equate, since we like to use the cheaper version) will dry up your nostrils, and allow you to breathe through your nose even when the pollen is at its worst. And this means no more bugs down your throat. And trust me, bugs up your nostrils is not half as bad.

The goggles are a recent discovery. Just last week, I was running along my merry old way when a bug flew into my eye. And this wasn´t your usually squishy little bitty fly. This was a tough little bugger, one that made me feel as though someone had just poured bleach into my eye, forcing me to run home with one eye closed, and left me with an eye infection I´m still on medication for. Lovely. So now I´ve taken to looking like a running fashion victim during the day when I wear sunglasses, while at night I, according to my boys, resemble a bug lady in my goggles.

But running in the summer is not all bad. I´ve been running, on and off, for several decades now, and I have to tell you that nowhere have I had this much response. I´ve had cars honk their horns at me, people yelling out windows, and people slowing down to wave. And to be honest, I´m not sure why. When I run, I look more like a hobo than anything else, and I´m usually red and sweaty; far from attractive. I’ve also noticed that people tend to honk at me more often when I’m running away from the car (so they see me from behind), than when I’m running towards them. However, this seems to have changed once I started wearing glasses. So either I’m what my students would call a “tip drill”, or we have some very odd bug-o-philes here in Georgia.

So if someone ever tells you running is boring, they’ve obviously never been down here. It’s running for rednecks!