The one and only foot chase I ran during my policing career involved a young woman I’ll refer to as Annie. In the three and a half years I worked in her community, I had numerous interactions with her, none of them violent but all of them sad and leading in a direction that I sincerely hope changed for the better over the decades that followed.
Annie had violated conditions of her release and was arrestable, so when I saw her in town, I pulled over. The young, slightly built teen was in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers and didn’t see me walking toward her. It was a sunny day on Main Street with the usual locals milling about. Telling ‘cop’ stories is a bit of a challenge, because practices change over the years and the world is now full of arm-chair quarterbacks and YouTube experts willing to tell you what you did wrong. There are lot of things that I could have done differently that day but it worked out nevertheless.
I told Annnie she was under arrest as I took hold of her upper arm, but her reaction was quicker than mine. She easily twisted away from me and started running up the sidewalk. With little thought of anything other than “Oh, shit!” I started running after her. Within seconds we were both across the street and headed toward the small graveyard in the center of town that led through to the next block up. My duty belt was rattling and jiggling, and I remember holding my radio and hoping that I could outlast her bare, skinny legs that were pumping like pistons.
When we entered the graveyard and started weaving between the headstones, the smooth leather soles of my black ankle boots met the wet grass and my feet came out from under me. As my rear-end unceremoniously hit the ground, I could hear an ‘oooh’ from the small crowd that had gathered on Main Street. Fueled by adrenaline, pride and a body much younger than the one I now occupy, I thankfully popped back up and the chase continued.
By the time we were halfway through the graveyard, I hadn’t closed any of the distance, but neither had Annie gained any ground. It was a moving stalemate. Annie didn’t break stride the first time she glanced back to see where I was but just as she crested the hill leading back out onto the road, she looked a second time and her pace slowed as her eyes met mine. Just as quickly as she had sprinted off, Annie stopped, her whole body drooping in defeat. My heart still aches for her all these years later.
With both of us working hard to catch our breath, I handcuffed Annie and spoke the words placing her under arrest and advising her of her rights. We slowly and carefully walked back down through the graveyard, past the silent audience to my police car. Annie was searched, placed in the back seat and neither of us said a word on the drive to the detachment.
I hadn’t thought of Annie in decades, but she popped into my head recently on a run. Running and writing are both things I’ve found my way back to lately and so I have been giving a lot of thought to the mental aspect of both.
Marathoning for Mortals by John ‘The Penguin’ Bingham and Jenny Hadfield had been my motivation and guide for getting into running after my second child was born in 2004. Somewhere in my dog-eared copy was the quote “The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.” Looking back now, I appreciate the work I put into getting to the starting line. With a newborn and a five-year-old and carrying 50 lbs of ‘baby weight’, my running had begun with circling the suburban block where I lived. If the front door light was on when I chugged back into view of the house, it meant the baby was awake and I needed to go in to nurse. If the light was still off, I was good to keep going. The block was such a monumental distance for me that I would quietly wish for the baby to wake up. I was too self-conscious to run through the neighbourhood in the daylight. I had a treadmill in the basement with a portable DVD player strapped to it, and I recorded every mile in my logbook, following a run-walk plan that would take me to my first half-marathon less than a year later.
The first full marathon I ran was the Nike’s Women’s Marathon in San Francisco two years after my son was born. It was a huge accomplishment for me and I was very, very nervous. I don’t know what I thought a ‘real’ runner was at the time, but I was certain it wasn’t me. I was heavier than I wanted to be and felt like a pack mule with my mini water bottles strapped around my waist. I worried about my running shorts riding up, my digestion, my dignity, getting to the finish line and a myriad of other things. I measured myself against the women runners who appeared to have no body fat, no structural worries about their sports bras nor any obvious concerns with flabby bits rubbing together and spontaneously combusting. Once I started the run, I noticed that many of the participants were running for a cause – childhood cancer, in memory of Dad who died of heart disease, autism awareness, etc. and my negative dialogue became even louder. Not only was I not a ‘real’ runner, I also hadn’t raised any money and was running for myself. I was fat AND selfish.
I didn’t feel any sense of wonderment in the 5+ hours it took me to finish. It was a complete slugfest, mentally and physically. With about 5km left, I hit the proverbial wall and had to will my hips to drag the concrete blocks that had replaced my legs. My goal became simply to finish upright. And I did. When I got back to work, one of my colleagues, walking past me in the hallway, asked me what my time was. Silly me, I answered truthfully and he responded with “Did you even train??” He was the last person I admitted my time to. It saddens me now to think of how hard I was on myself. Allowing someone else to confirm my bias was a mistake I would not make again, regarding running at least. There must have been some enjoyment, because I did go on to run two more full marathons, and when someone would ask about my time, I would respond “I finished the same day I started, and I had a smile on my face”.
At 57, with a fledgling return to running, I notice that my mental dialogue has changed dramatically. I’m not sure if it’s because of therapy, all the self-help books, the passage of time, or none of the above, but I’ll take it. I am a runner just by virtue of the fact that I run. Will I run another marathon? Maybe. I do love a good logbook, a detailed plan, a spreadsheet, new tech, new sneakers and a lofty goal. But right now, I just want to run.
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