Before I left Brooklyn, I threw away a pair of running shoes. They were the first pair I’ve owned and actively used for more than a year (even though lately the word ‘active’ has meant running one to three times a week). They were Nike Pegasus, as usual — the only model of running shoe I’ve felt comfortable in since my days on the OSU team, when Nike was our sponsor and therefore our only choice.

Side note: Before those days, I had been pretty faithful to Mizuno. The idea of having to run in Nike running shoes — even the Bowerman series — irritated me at first and made me cringe and grab for my shins and knees in phantom pains after each run. Those pains didn’t actually exist, and after a season or two in the Pegasus, Nike became my favorite running shoe.

I came to the realization today while scanning the racks in Famous Footwear for something, anything, that I could run in without destroying my feet or legs, that that was probably the last expensive pair of running shoes I’ll buy for awhile. Until I have a job, at least, and until I’m running more than 25 miles a week consistently, I don’t deserve nice things, like expensive running shoes and sleek new shorts.

I had bought this final pair of Nike Pegasus at a cute little runner’s boutique in Corvallis last August when I was getting back into somewhat reasonable racing shape (the last time I’ve done THAT in a year). I also bought a Nike Plus watch, and when I threw out my running shoes in that juicy, Brooklyn metal trash can I forgot to get the little pod out of the sole of my shoe — dammit.

There’s this fad that seems to be washing over all my Facebook friends across the last year or two. As I’ve gradually “retired,” I’ve become more and more casual about running — I’ll go through spurts of great motivation where I run 35-45 miles a week, but these are punctuated by dry periods where I run maybe once a week. As I’ve slowed down in running, they’ve discovered it, seemingly for the first time — they’ve become vigorous about it. Zealous, even. People who would have scoffed at the idea of going for a run at all in high school and refused to work out anywhere but in the warm, dry gym on the elliptical machines in college all of a sudden are these hardcore, cut, watch-wearing harriers.

They might not be fast or racing for time, but they’re into it — they’ve joined local teams, they run half marathons and marathons, they do triathlons and somehow sneak their way onto highly-coveted spots on Hood to Coast teams. They run 45 miles a week at 9 minute pace and think nothing of it. For them, it’s not mental. They are not neurotic, which nearly all “real” runners I know are. They don’t punish themselves by busting out 7 miles at 6:30 pace after not running for a week. They don’t berate themselves for not running fast enough or often enough — they don’t fight with themselves to just get out the door.

I’ve always loved to run, and I always will run — no matter if I’m competing or how often I have time to do it. It’s a huge part of who I am and it has been since I was probably 8, if I can pinpoint an exact age. When I’m stressed or upset or depressed, I have to run. If I seem off when I talk to my parents on the phone or in person, they ask if I’ve been running. When something’s going wrong in my life, it’s always exponentially improved by me getting back into shape or just hitting my favorite running spots a few times. But it’s always been a struggle, because I’ve always been obsessed with being “good” and “fast”, and I’ve always done my training runs way too fast, which unfailingly led to frustrating injuries and early season burn out.

I was mediocre for most of high school, so I spent a summer and a winter running six to seven miles every night until I finally cracked the top five in our district. Walking onto the team at OSU and working myself up the ladder there was tough, but maybe not as tough as the daily struggle of just getting out the door sometimes.

For me, running was usually angry, heated, fast, fierce, ugly. Especially before I left for a run every day, I’d be lacing up my shoes and hating myself and hating the hills I knew I was about to drag myself through and hating the IT band ache that still, to this day, will never go away. But I knew if I didn’t go, I would hate myself even more, so I groaned and spat and shook my head. My stomach curdled and finally turned — and I would sacrifice a sock in the middle of the berry-stained woods somewhere because I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.

But after — after. Even if I was slogging back to my car with one sock, a million stinging cuts, sweat in my eyes and three new blood blisters on my hideous, raggedy feet, I could not begin to describe the feeling. Accomplishment, euphoria, knowing that you kick ass — the feeling that wow, I’m in better shape than I thought I was. Wanting to seek out a race or time trial, because damn, I’m ready.

It’s different, now. I’m less neurotic — now, when I go for a run, it’s because I want to, not because I have to make up whatever I didn’t run yesterday because I need to meet a mileage quota by Sunday and oh my god I’m already seven miles behind. I run slower now, too. The miles of trials have taught me that, for me at least, gut-wrenching diarrhea usually comes with busting out the first three miles of an uncomfortable run at 6 minute pace, so I start out slow and work my way up. I like to run alone, now, because I’m not doing it just for the sake of getting it done and over with for the day. And I’m never tempted to bring an iPod (for the record, I haven’t run with music since I was 16) because I want to live in it. I want to remember it. I don’t want to escape it anymore. It’s more of a comfortable, fond relationship, like a long talk with an old friend, than a daily love-hate battle.

I was feeling old and fat and out of shape a few weeks ago in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which has a 3.5 mile running and biking loop around it that I decided to do twice that night. There are always, ALWAYS runners on that loop, which is both good and bad for me. In this little sphere of my life, I am maybe the most competitive person I know, so no matter who’s in front of me or how far away they are and no matter how out of shape I am, I groan and, completely involuntarily, end up dragging myself past them, panting and wheezing and entirely hating myself the whole time.

I met my match that night. Usually people hate that competitive jerk that brushes past them a little too fast and a little too close, but that night a short Latino dude — clearly not a runner — was not going to let me pass him. I drafted him for probably two miles, edging forward and falling back. I weaved a little, and he weaved too, not allowing me to pass. Eventually I caught up with him, feeling like a lanky and uncoordinated gazelle running next to a fitter but smaller warthog, and we ran together for awhile, going probably 7:30 pace.

When we came to the only hill in the park, which is gradual but long,  he finally fell off. I sort of chuckled to myself, thinking maybe I still had it, and chugged on for a few minutes — then immediately hated myself again when I saw the next person in front of me and subconsciously made the choice to tackle them, too.

I think I’ve run twice since that run in the park a few weeks ago. So no, I don’t still have it. Not even close… especially evidenced by the fact that today in Famous Footwear, I finally settled on some Nike Reaxes, or whatever the hell they’re called, for $65.

They don’t hug my feet. They don’t cushion my high arch or make my IT band feel like it’s being protectively coddled from disaster and injury. In fact, they feel almost like running in a pair of Vans, but I don’t deserve those fancy, expensive shoes anymore — unlike my newly running-starved Facebook friends, who are in the honeymoon phase of their relationship with running, a relationship yet unmarred by injury, burnout and plateau. And until I’m back there where I always want to be and consistently running more than 25 to 30 miles a week, I’ll duck my head and dutifully slog it out in my cheap (cardboard) Nikes.

This post will probably not be worth reading for those of you who Google my name because you know me as a reporter, or an intern, or a fledgling journo desperately grappling to make my name and brand myself (hire me?).

Not that this post will be inappropriate, or rude, or grammatically incorrect, or even poorly written (hopefully — though I did just use an Oxford comma). But there is no argument here. No beginning, no middle and no real editorial-style end. AP style will be inconsistent and my human side will invariably take over, and I will gush. And gush. But I just have to expound, just for once, about missing home.

For anyone who may have been living under a rock or just not adequately Facebook/Twitter stalking me for the last few months (rude), I’m in New York, living in Long Island and interning for Newsday this summer. This is by far the biggest opportunity of my life, and the scariest, and most exciting, and every day I feel like I’m in way over my head.

One of my former editors and biggest life mentors once told me you should never feel too comfortable at an internship, otherwise you’re missing the point. That every day when you walk in those doors, it should be a little scary, that talking to your editors should be a little intimidating. It is those things every day, yes, and it’s also brought me the farthest from home and the people and things (and dog, and horse) I love.

Before I moved out here to live for ten weeks in this dorm at SUNY Farmingdale in a less-than-picturesque, landlocked town sliced in half by a flat, ugly highway and dotted with furniture outlets, I lived in a barn in rural Oregon. The grass was luscious, the hills were rolling, and I fed horses twice a day, every day. I mucked stalls and tossed hay. Whenever I felt like it, I could crawl on my horse bareback and take off through lumpy, untouched fields behind my rustic little kingdom. I ran through deep woods and biked through waves of scenic farm land to work and to school.

I didn’t have internet. I didn’t have TV. As a student and a 21st century American I was never far from those things, but when I was home, they didn’t exist. There were candles, books, my dog and the smell of hay. There were insistent nickers from my horse, who lived across the barn aisle from me, every morning when he heard me wake up and start shuffling around. There were mice and bugs, and once, there was a snake. And that was pretty much it.

Here, there is no dog, no horse.  The grass is prickly, the trees were planted, and the view from my window is a black mesh fence and a Target parking lot. And if I’m having an exceptionally bad week, I can’t just escape everything, jump in my car and mob up the I-5 corridor toward home.

Things smell bad here, too. The air is thick and wet and the sky feels really, oppressively close. I was completely appalled the other day when, in the newsroom, we got a notice saying that the air in Long Island and in the city wasn’t fit to breathe, and that everyone should try to stay inside that day. Increased smog and reduced air quality, and whatever. Everybody else shrugged it off, but I locked myself in the newsroom all day and didn’t leave until I had to go home.

Some deep paranoid creature inside me gets extremely antsy when I get some of this New York tap water in my mouth while taking a shower. I’m aware of how awful I sound, but I lived in rural Oregon (arguably the most environmentally conscious state in the U.S.) and drank the coldest well water you’ve ever tasted, right out of my kitchen sink. So cold it could give you a headache. So cold your tongue might go numb for a few seconds afterward, or if you touched it to the back of your hand, it felt like a spongy ice cube.

But I love being in New York. I’m young. It’s flashy. There are more car accidents, house fires, murders, shows, parties, free concerts, people, stories, energy. I grew up here, in Westchester, and my aunt and uncle and the town I’ve feverishly dreamed of coming back to since my mom and I left are always just 40 minutes away, now. I get to go there every weekend. I run through the streets I biked as a kid, and the second the heavy, dank smell of this one specific breed of pollen hits my nose, my insides go nuts: I see myself as I was at 7 years old — lopsided, long-legged and in love with this world I knew.

When we move, we grow. For me, I was lucky enough that moving meant coming back to a place I’ve quite literally fantasized about since they dragged me away, kicking and screaming and clinging to door frames, at 9 years old. And this is all just an extended visit, a summer trip — in September I have to go  back to Oregon and figure out what I want to actually do with my life.

I told myself I’d come back here, and here I am. And I’m proud, and humbled, and ecstatic and scared. But sometimes, when I want to go for a night run under this black dome of stars, or suck in the smell of pine trees and ripe blackberries until my lungs go numb, or hear the rain on the barn roof, I have to think about what I’ve left behind.