Nancy Bilger
I’m a thirties runner. I haven’t been doing it forever, ran track in high school and jumped back in within the past few years. I started running to train for the Army Ten-Miler in 2008. I left that race saying that I would never run a 10 mile race again. But, it was too late. I got the bug. I have lived the better part of my adult life as mother, caretaker, teacher, cab driver, party-planner. I figured out, after I ran that first race, that running afforded me, as cliché as it sounds, me time. It gave me a chance to hear my own breath, my own heartbeat and be alone with my own thoughts. Something not necessarily possible with two perpetually active, busy and precocious young boys!
My running became my distraction from the everyday “here, there and everywhere.” I am not one to log miles or collect trophies or ribbons. It’s pretty simple. I run because I can. An injury, be it brief or eternal, brings the realization that letting the gift of movement go to waste is a shame.
When I am finished with a run—good or bad—I fully embrace my feeling of well-being and accomplishment. Truth be told, running makes me a nicer wife and mother (just ask my family!). I get to meet new people in run groups and at race events. And lastly, if I didn’t run, I wouldn’t have a reason to buy all these cool shoes!
"Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too." ~ Richard O'Brien
