Essay: Let Us Run

Let Us Run

By Jamie Wagman
QuailBellMagazine.com

​Thirty-one-year old Alexandra Nicolette ran on a dirt road in Rose Township, Michigan. Thirty-year old Karina Vetrano ran on a trail in Spring Creek Park in Queens, New York. Twenty-seven-year old Vanessa Marcotte ran in the woods near Princeton, Massachusetts. These three women were all killed between July 30 and August 7, in cases police have called unrelated. Alexandra was shot and killed; Vanessa was found raped, murdered, and burned; Karina was raped and murdered. And they were all killed in broad daylight under the afternoon sun. 
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​I, too, love an afternoon summer run when the sun is blaring and sky is blue. Runner’s high begins to kick in after 3 or 4 miles, leading to instant happiness. I run with headphones on, the beat of Joan Jett in my ears. I wonder if these women, too, were listening to music.
 
The New York Times and New York magazine recently reported that some women are resorting to jogging on treadmills due to fear for their lives. I understand this notion, but I hope that we are not all deterred. As a runner for 20 years, I hope other women runners will still take to the streets and to remember the victims and honor them by continuing to run outside, even in the woods, under the skies. I don’t want us to avoid conversations or newspaper stories about the deaths of women runners; I want us to confront them. 
 
I didn’t always feel this way. Four months after I moved to Baltimore when I was 21, a man in my apartment building stabbed and raped another woman in my complex. Neighbors alerted police upon hearing her screams. She, too, had recently moved to the area, and chose our apartment complex perhaps because of its presumed safety. Morningside Heights even sounded cheerful. Shortly after that night, police held a meeting about safety, and I avoided it because I was equal parts in denial and impervious.
 
A couple weeks later I was out jogging in the neighborhood and noticed a car following me and then pulling over, and then doing it again. I stupidly walked toward the car and motioned for the driver to roll down the window. The driver, a middle-aged white man with a baseball cap and dark glasses, looked away and drove on, only to stop again in another few minutes. I didn’t run with a cell phone in those days, and my heart pounded. I kept running on a fairly well-trafficked road instead of heading home to lead him to my door. Finally, he drove away. Was I in real danger? I still don’t know.
 
I do know that the recent unrelated deaths of women joggers in Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts, forced the total recall of these events, and I’ve been thinking on the ways I am consciously cautious in my running ever since my wakeup call in Baltimore that I, too, could be a statistic.
 
I came to running almost by accident. I wasn’t seeking a sport, but I was seeking solace. At age 17, the usual suspects kept me awake at night: contemplating what to do with my life, what to study, whom to date. My dad, a stone cold silent type, was the runner in the family and I didn’t want to follow in any of his footsteps. But a couple friends and I signed up for high school track, and I haven’t looked back since. I am no Robert Gibb or Kathrine Switzer, but I am grateful that they first ran the Boston Marathon in the '60s despite the harassment and ridicule they received, forever paving the way for so many other women to lace up their shoes and head out for a long run or race.  
 
Running has been there for me ever since, and it’s an identity I wear with ease. Training for races taught me to be a better friend to my body, to nurture and feed my body for fuel. I ran for friendship at times and for solitude at others. I run because it offers freedom, flight. I run to feel like an athlete for a few minutes every day instead of a mother or wife or worker. I run to figure out my problems, and 45 minutes of speed and always puts struggle in perspective. Running strengthens my mind and my body and this daily workout kept me from drowning last summer when a lake current started to sweep me away until I planted my runner’s legs firmly into the mud.
 
I don’t do the things I did back in Baltimore: running without a phone, running in the dark, running without a friend in areas known for stragglers and catcalling. That doesn’t mean I am safe; I have no illusions about this. I still get harassed in my own neighborhood. I teach Gender Studies. I am aware of statistics: that every 109 seconds, another person experiences sexual assault, along with the harrowing lack of reporting that occurs.
 
But running gave me myself, more than any other hobbies or passions. I can still easily recall the rage of my teenage years and that same orange fire in me still blazes some days when memory fractures, when my frame feels a bit too slight, when I’m walking and suddenly don’t know what to do with my arms. Running always gave me something to do with my arms, transforming my angst into energy.
 
There were days in my youth and still days now when I run miles upon miles, hitting the pavement with my body as though that was the only coping skill I was ever granted. Running taught me to appreciate forest and trails: 1,300 acres of prairie and wetlands where I trained for a marathon, watching the paths change, the earth rotate just slightly on its axis as I kept on. I write this in the hope that we can all keep on, running through prairies and wetlands, parks and woods. We can be visible, an army of women, together and alone, running under the sun and wind and rain, holding Alexandra, Karina, and Vanessa in our memories.