Gearing up for Robbie's Run

Last Wednesday morning, I was a mile and half into a 3.1-mile run through south Merrick, where I live, when I was overcome by a side stitch that emanated from the right side of my abdomen and wrapped around my torso to my back.

My first thought was to keep running, to push through the pain. That was what I was told to do as a high school and college cross-country and track competitor. But I didn’t want to run through it. I wanted the pain to simply go away.

I’m 44. These days, I want to live as painlessly as possible. If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that I recently battled a kidney stone that was so excruciating, I might as well have been stabbed in the back with a dagger.

What I want is to enjoy running as an existential experience, to feel the warming air hit my cheeks, to soak in the sounds of the street –– the chirping of house sparrows as they flit through the trees, the roar of a motorcycle as it rumbles along.

A little over a year and a half ago, I gave myself a Father’s Day present –– a pair of running shoes. I decided then that I would run a 5K race in two years, even though I hadn’t run in more than a decade.

I ran competitively from age 12 to 22. In my 20s, I continued running for exercise, not for sport. Then, in my 30s, I stopped cold. I had two children, and when your kids are young, they take your every non-working moment. Now my oldest is finishing elementary school and my youngest isn’t far behind. They’re more independent now. They need my wife and me, of course. But, as parents, we now have moments of free time. So I’m able to squeeze in 20- and 30-minute runs four, at times five, days a week.

I decided to run a 5K to set a goal for myself. My goal, though, is no longer to run a sub-16½-minute 5K, as it was in college. It’s simply to finish.

I decided to make Robbie’s Run my first race. Robbie’s Run is a fundraiser for Forever Nine: The Robbie Levine Foundation, a Merrick-based nonprofit organization that has raised tens of thousands of dollars to have automated external defibrillators installed at youth athletic fields and to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation/AED training to youth athletic leagues and in the schools.