Listen Up: Run Rabbit Run

Photo by Gordon Burniston

In the past month, I have run more, run longer and run further than I have in the past ten years combined.

Before, there were a few impulsive attempts to force myself into the habit, nearly all of which ended with me gasping and clutching my chest and scanning the blurred horizon for a scythe-wielding man in dark robes. There was the Wellness class my first semester of high school, where every day, either around a makeshift track behind the school or in circles around the gymnasium, we ran for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I did not like it, but if only to make a point against a particular gaggle of girls who somehow got away with casually sauntering around the track in the red cotton gym shorts they'd rolled up at the waistband three or four times into an acceptable non-length, I ran and ran and ran. Later, there was my campus gym in college, which I went to so infrequently that investing in proper attire never seemed worth it, so I'd just sporadically jump on a treadmill in the same tennis shoes I schlepped around campus in, whatever bra and t-shirt I'd worn to class earlier and closest thing I had to running shorts, one of the several pairs of novelty boxer shorts I slept in (usually the especially sporty lobster-print ones).

I mean, just do it, right?

But I rarely did. Left to my own devices, running became something that I considered occasionally, but mostly figured would always be a thing that Other People Did (and probably those Other People eventually included the rolled-shorts girls, who I imagine were more concerned with the tiny amount of weight we all gained in college than I was). What made me finally give running another try this summer, after all these years, was a combination of things: my boyfriend moving in and discovering the weight-room at a neighboring loft complex also owned by our landlords, that same boyfriend being a very good cook and my pants suddenly not exactly fitting all that well anymore, the realization that it had indeed been over ten years since I exercised in any deliberate or sustained way, the triumph of a close friend running Atlanta's biggest 10K a year after she forced herself to start running, plus the sudden coalescence in my Google Reader of a few running logs kept by writers I enjoy and admire.

Suddenly, it just seemed worth trying. Again. And so I procured a legitimate pair of running shorts, dug up a pair of hardly-broken-in tennis shoes, and within the first fifteen minutes and two seconds of being on a treadmill in five or more years, found myself having run an entire mile. I haven't skipped more than two days since.

On that first run and on every run since—a little faster, a little further each time—weird things started happening in my brain. In high school, the soundtrack to my Wellness runs had been the squeaking of tennis shoes against the gym floor, the lung-strained chatter of my friends, the alternate giggling and whining of the rolled-shorts girls. In college, it had been the general din and chatter of the work-out room combined with the buzzing insecurities of my own inner monologue, the silent screams of my lobster boxers. I never reached that point that I always heard so much about, the point when you're running and your body just takes over, your mind rubbed clean by your pounding feet and pumping endorphins. Maybe it's the relative solitude of the room I'm now running in, where there's just the hum of the air-conditioner, the grinding whir of my treadmill and my boyfriend grunting and clanking away on the weight machine, but on that first run and every one since I've finally gotten there, to that wonderful blankness.

It happens somewhere around the third or fourth minute, when my legs start to feel real heavy and bad; usually by then I'm staring kinda cross-eyed at the semi-closed mini-blinds across the small room from me, the world beyond slatted and jumping as my head lopes along on top of my body, wondering what exactly I'm doing to myself. Then the waves start hitting my brain. I think of them as waves because, during those first few runs, the same song always started playing in my head around the same time. I've been slow to care about the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit over the past year or so, but somehow their song “Swim Until You Can't See Land” lodged itself precisely in the pocket of my mind that first gets torn open when the pounding of my legs and the straining of my heart makes me forget everything else. At first, it was just the chorus, just “swim until you can't see land / swim until you can't see land / swim until you can't see land” repeating over and over and over again behind my eyes. They were good words to hear, and easy to chant silently along with whatever pace I managed to set for myself, even though I could never call up the rest of the words or tune.

When I finally brought along my iPod to further test the impact of musical distraction on my time, I threw the song on a haphazard playlist, but it wasn't until it finally came up on shuffle that I realized how wonderful it is, how little attention I'd paid to it before and how weirdly perfect it is to run to. This is, of course, despite the fact that it's not a very good running song at all, at least not based on my understanding of what a good running song should be. “Swim” is uneven, sonically and emotionally—it starts out slow, picks up along the way, drops into a mellow bridge and then ramps up right at the end. It's earnest and moody, but to varying degrees throughout; there's a gently-tapped tambourine and some slow hand-claps. It would probably better suited, actually, for listening to while wandering through some old, unfamiliar city on some breezy fall afternoon, alone and with nowhere to be and something heavy on your mind. It is nothing that would play in a Nike commercial or in a stadium before a big track meet. It would sound really out of place playing in a locker room. In fact, its strong point as a running song, aside from suiting my beginner's gait, is its lyrics—which I realize goes against the whole beauty of running pushing my brain to shut off and my body to take over, but I guess I can't give it up entirely.

Scott Hutchinson, who would sound so much like the Counting Crows' Adam Duritz if it wasn't for his devastating Scottish brogue and less-aimless brand of self-loathing, sings about redemption and renewal, throwing himself into the freezing ocean, trying to find some newer, better version of himself at the absolute outer reaches of his existence. “Let’s call me a baptist / call this the drowning of the past,” he says of hurling himself into the frigid North Sea, and his is immersion literal and figurative, spiritual and physical.

Now the water’s taller than me
And the land is a marker line
All I am is a body adrift in water, salt and sky

Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?

It is a feeling that I know, if only recently: that of being just a physical object—of being so small, elemental, mutable—but also vastly more than that, able to change course and pull and strain and wrangle yourself into something new. And I know now, too, that you often need some kind of talisman, something (literal and figurative, spiritual and physical) to drag with you into battle against yourself. This is true for overcoming a broken heart, as Hutchinson seems to be, or just a slow-beating one, like mine.

It's getting easier: I can run a mile in 11 minutes now. I still worry I'm doing some things wrong, especially when the fronts of my legs ache the morning after—I peer down at my uncomplicated sneakers and remember every horrible thing I've ever heard about busted knees and shin splints, and wonder if maybe I should invest in some better shoes. But I feel good when I run. I am red-faced and steady-breathing and do not appear to have just rolled out of bed. I've made some changes to my running playlist, too, based on the advice of more seasoned runner-friends: Girl Talk has replaced the weird smattering of Apples in Stereo and Mates of State and Frightened Rabbit I used before. The beats are stranger but steadier, the words more oblique, and with Gregg Gillis' help I can now do a mile and a half without feeling like death. I'm working up to doing two miles soon. I feel, mostly, like I'm doing it right. But I am also slowly realizing what I maybe should have known before: that as a one-person sport, there are very few rules in running. It's just you and your body, whatever you chose to put on it and whatever sounds you feed yourself while pounding down whatever chunk of interminable distance you have the strength for on a given day. And so, underneath and among all the skittering samples and relentless beats I've found are the better soundtrack to my runs, I am clinging to “Swim Until You Can't See Land”—an unlikely anthem, perhaps, but my feeble, wheezing own.

Rachael Maddux is Paste’s associate editor. Her column appears at PasteMagazine.com every Monday.

Watch Frightened Rabbit's video for "Swim Until You Can't See Land" (from their 2010 album The Winter of Mixed Drinks):