Slogging

Lynaea and I were e-mailing a while back, and she was writing about her pleasure in jogging. I was envious, somewhat. Jogging was my preferred exercise. But my middle-aged knees and feet cannot jog on pavement anymore. Fortunately, I live by a beach, where I slog. What’s slogging you say? Well, it is the art of jogging very slowly, so slow, in fact, that it cannot be called a jog. It can only be called a slog, which is short for slo-jog. I had my first child at 35. After she was born, my body was a mess. Really. I hobbled around, could only do three pushups a day, and my aching knees and hips meant that my usual path to health—jogging—was out. I was stymied in how to regain health and energy. One day my husband suggested that I try jogging on the beach on the upper level where the sand was soft instead of on the hard sand by the water. He chose the beach for my initiation run carefully. It offered lots of flat, deep sand. So we started jogging. I mentioned I was out of shape, right? I went about 25 yards and was breathing so heavy, I just couldn’t go on. I choked out in a pathetic, gaspy voice: “I can’t go on; we’ll have to stop.” My husband looked at me in astonishment. “Stop!” He said. “We don’t stop, we just slow down!” At that moment, for me, the universe exquisitely slowed down. It was like a slow-motion scene in a Kung-Fu movie. “WWWWwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaatttttttt ddoooooooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuuu mmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeean sssssssssllllllllloooow ddooooooooooowwwwwn?” I said. At that very moment, “slow” became a mantra and metaphor that I embraced. Slow opened up possiblities, including getting in shape. We slowed down to what could no longer be called a jog. Too slow to be called a jog. It was A Slog. It was delightful. And I could actually do it. Regularly. It took a while, a long while, for me to get back in shape. A year later though, I was regularly slogging four miles in soft sand, finding pleasure in the slo-mo of it. The sinking into the deepness of Sunset Beach’s coarse, granular sand with one foot and then another felt good. My heart loved it, my feet loved it, my hips and knee joints loved it. And my soul loved it. There I learned to slow down enough to hear answers to prayers. I slowly learned to listen to my own self and find a new consciousness of my own thoughts and feelings. The slowness of the slog was healing. One day, as I was slogging on the beach at dusk, I felt the difference it had made in me. My muscles coordinated my slog into a kind of grace that I had never felt physically before. I realized that I was in the best shape I had ever been in. Pride welled up in my bosom. At that very moment, a perky little voice behind me said: “Hello.” And this young woman, about 23 whipped past me in, not a jog, but a run. She was not even out of breath. My pride was punctured. But only momentarily. Not that day, but some day, she could discover the pleasure of slogging too. It’s something you don’t rush into.