The Block and the Search

A long, long time ago, back in the mid-1970s, I used to run regularly. The course I usually ran on was around a 2.9 mile block in Davie, Florida that encompassed Broward Community College and some public schools. The terrain varied greatly from place to place. Sometimes I’d run on asphalt, while other times I’d run over different types of grass and dirt. There was a stretch along the northwest corner of the course that was rocky and riddled with holes. The two main characteristics of my course were wide-open spaces and the surrounding schools. The fact that I wasn’t running through residential neighborhoods was a big plus, since at that time runners were generally jeered at by people and chased after and bitten by the nice dogs running around loose (at least in my fine neighborhood). The culture of “Runner’s World” had not yet descended on our society, and people who were running out in public were seen, at worst, as suspicious and at best, as ridiculous. So I always sought out places to run that were more out in the open country, so to speak. This did not prevent people from cursing me, honking at me, yelling at me, and/or throwing garbage at me from their cars as they passed by. But those events were the exceptions and not the rule. Usually, people around there went about their business and I went about mine. At the beginning of each run, I often felt uncomfortable and even stiff, but once I put in a mile or so, I was “sailing”! I experienced a kind of detached, peaceful feeling while running out there, something that I haven’t been able to recapture to any significant degree since I moved to Gainesville.

But now I am on the search for a similar place in my current hometown. Around my neighborhood is a stretch called “Mile Run” that many people use to run, walk, ride bicycles, or walk dogs. But it seems a bit too “urban” to me. My residential neighborhood is okay, as far as worrying about dogs or unfriendly people is concerned. But I’d be pretty much limited to running on asphalt here, and, once again, it doesn’t have an “out in the country” feel to it. And besides, there are asphalt tracks that I can use if I want to run on this kind of surface. I’ve thought about the University of Florida campus as a possibility, but the traffic there is horrendously high, even out in the more rural areas. There are some places further out west from Gainesville that seem more promising. Thanks to an Internet site called MapMyRun.com that I picked up off a running blogsite, I can now design my own course using any combination of roads I want and measure out its distance on my computer. Up to now, I confined my runs to a treadmill until I built my distance up. But now I’m covering three miles per run and would like a more interesting experience than that treadmill, although I’m grateful to be able to use it when it’s an unbearable 95˚F outside (or raining cats amd dogs)! The search is on, though. I know that somewhere out there is a running course with my name on it, waiting to be discovered!