I ran, I ran, I ran so far away: From Atlanta with love!

I lived in Atlanta for exactly 5 years but it was only during my last year there that I got to see the real city. Partly because I was busy with school and research but also because I was not really going out in the city. In my last year in Atlanta, thanks to my running habit, it changed dramatically. Every week I design a running path which would start from my home in west midtown and would go through different neighborhoods and would end in a café or restaurant where I was meeting my friends for brunch. This became my ritual, my version of Sunday worship and prayer. I was ;leaving my house at 7 am on Sunday and depending on how far I would run, after few hours I would end up meeting my friends at a nice restaurant for food. I was spending the rest of my Sundays to recover.
Through these Sunday runs, I saw many neighborhoods around downtown, midtown, and Buckhead. I even once ran to the Chattahoochee river that is notorious for disposing corpses. The runs ranged from 10 to 20 miles. At some point toward the I started mapping my runs on the Google map and saving them by date every week. I have a collection of 12 runs from Atlanta on my computer:

I ran, I ran, I ran so far away: Unto us a king is born

After running for a summer in 2000 I didn’t run for 13 years. It seemed that I had forgotten it or I was not interested in running again. My life took very sharp turns and went through lots of up and downs. I travelled a lot, saw many places, met many amazing people and then I finally moved to the US and started a new life in Atlanta, Georgia. I went to school and in toward the end of my PhD, one Saturday night I got an email from a friend who was asking me if I will be interested to join her in a run on Sunday. The run was organized by a meetup group in Atlanta and the idea was to run around the Piedmont Park. Piedmont is a large beautiful park right at the heart of midtown Atlanta. It has a shape of a triangle and its perimeter is about 3 miles and therefore it is a favorite area for local runners.

Piedmont Park, Atlanta

On that Sunday in August 2013, I put on my sneakers and biked to the park, parked my biked on the other side of the street and then joined a group of runners majority of them were female in their 50s and 60s. They were the sweetest people I had met and they welcomed us with big smiles.
Soon after the run officially started, the group was split into few subgroups of fast or slow runners. I tried to stick to the main core and the leader of the group who was running at a medium pace. We started from the main gate on 10th street, and went west toward Piedmont Ave and took it up to Monroe Dr. Once we reached the peak of the triangle where Piedmont and Monroe meet, I was pretty sure that I was done with the run. I was breathing short and fast and my heart was beating like it was going to jump out of my chest. There was a moment of decision: should I stop and take care of my body or ignore it and finish what I had started. I looked at the fellow runners in our small group. There were 3 or 4 of them, old but in shape and healthy. All seemed happy and enjoying the run. They were chatting all along the way. I was surprised how they could talk while running without being short of breathe.

I though by myself that if they can do it, I HAVE TO do it. So I kept running and following them. Looking down at their pace and just follow it automatically. Finally we got back down to 10th street and we approached the finish point inside the park. Once I got there, I fell down. I collapsed and I remember I told myself that that was it. “I am not going to run again”, I thought.
My friend who had stopped just after a mile of running, joined me and asked how I feel. I told her that it was fun but I am not sure if I can do it again.

On the way back home on my bicycle, I started to think about what I have achieved: “running 3 miles”. It seemed so long and so hard that I immediately felt very good about it. I had run a distance that was more than my daily bike commute to work. I felt I have achieved a milestone and I also felt that it was something that I have done it alone. Something that it belongs to me and only me. Something that I can finally take 100 percent credit for it. If academic achievements and professional success are a combination of personal talent and environmental factors, running is really a solo accomplishment. Yes you can say you need good shoes to run but even with my cheap sneakers I could run 3 miles! That was something magical for me. It was as if I had become a different and better person after that run.

I went home and took a shower and for a week I was waiting for the next Sunday to go and run around the park again. My journey has just started and I was so excited about it.

I ran, I ran, I ran so far away: In the Beginning was water

(Photo: Stephen Lam / San francisco Chronicle / September 11, 2015)

This is my running diary. This is my soul searching journey to find out why I run, where and how I started it and whether I will stop ever. this is a confession to find the roots of my deep passion for running. When I think of running the first thing that comes to my mind is freedom. Running is liberating, it is the closest one can get to his body and mind. My running story is the story of dreaming and living up to your dreams. When I talk to my running friends, they usually tell me how they started running in high school and how they all were doing cross country runs. Running seems like a natural continuation of an old habit for them. My story is however, a bit different:

My hometown Isfahan, Iran

I really started running way after my high school years. As a matter of fact I did not play any sports in high school beside ping pong. It was and still is one of my most favorite sports to play. But as long as for running, I don't even remember that I ever considered trying it until later when I started college. One summer during my college years (I think year 2000), I started running in the mornings. I would run from our house to a nearby park and keep running along the river. After few weeks I had found my passion: distance running. I had a good friend who was living on the other side of the town. Every morning we were running to meet each other on a bridge and run a mile from there together. After that, I would keep running a loop back home from the other side of the river.

Although the total run was something like 4 miles, I always had a dream of running longer. My goal (that I never achieved) was to run from the closest bridge to our house to the last one and run back. That would be a good 10 miles, something so far away for me that made me think of it as an unreachable dream rather than a realistic goal. 

That dream never died in me although I forgot about running for many many years after that summer. 

I graduated in 2002, moved to another city for my graduate studies. Then moved back to my hometown for work and then left my home country for good. I travelled and lived for few years around the world and never ran again. I came to the US in 2009 and started school again and then one night in my last few years of the PhD program, everything changed.