With...Denise

As I've fallen further in love with running for it's sake rather than simply as a method of sweating off pounds, the people I've run with have become a large part of the joy.

Previously, I mentioned running with my son, Caleb. That didn't last long, but does come back into the story later.

When spring arrived in Pittsburgh in 2002, roughly July, Denise became my running buddy. We'd run together a few times early on in the dating days. Denise was an athlete in high school...volleyball and tennis. She exercised a LOT and was very health conscious. I was a pot smoking couch potato whose only exercise came from long walks in the clouds at the top of Iroquois Park and bussing tables at Red Lobster. Running, or any other exercise, for its own sake was not exactly on my top 10 things to give one's evening to.

But, when you're 17 and in love, you'll do anything. So, several times we'd run around Denise's neighborhood in the south end. Her route was about a mile long. Sometimes we'd make a couple laps.
Always a smart aleck, I'd literally run circles around her as she ran. I found it amusing. She didn't. These runs didn't last long.

So...decades later as I'm morphing from dough boy to human being, Denise enthusiastically joined me in running.

Sometimes, we'd run down Hazelwood Avenue enjoying the challenge of the hills in our neighborhood. That was a fun trip because you never knew when it was going to include witnessing a drug deal or some middle school age kid yelling to Denise from his front porch, 'Hey lady! Nice shorts!'

We had two usual routes. One was just up and down Parnell Street behind our house. The other, the one we took more often and that became a regular part of our evenings our remaining years in the Burgh was the oval at the top of Schenley Park.

The oval is a .6 m fine gravel track that wraps around soccer and softball fields, tennis courts, past playgrounds and a pavilion. On any warm day you'll find tons of Yinzers and their kids recreating joyfully on and inside it. And it is a place I will always treasure.

Riding to and from our runs, and on them, we'd catch up on the events of the day, discuss the business of our lives, share dreams, watch Caleb's soccer practice, argue, flirt, laugh and relax 4-5 days a week. Or, at least as often as we possibly could. There, we planned our 15th anniversary trip to Jamaica. The pic above is Denise ready for racquetball on that trip - one of the happiest times of our journey together. On the oval I cried about being homesick - and realized that home wasn't (and isn't) a place.

Sometimes we didn't talk at all. Sometimes we just ran. Listening to the crunch of the gravel under our feet as our strides became one. Watching the guys from Nigeria do things with soccer balls that no sane person could duplicate, dodging children learning to ride their bicycles, watching the sun set in a magnificent pink that I've not seen anywhere else.

Denise usually did 2, sometimes 1, sometimes 3 laps and then sat to read, call her mom, or people watch on a park bench while I pressed on. Generally I did 5, sometimes 6 or 7, laps, enjoying the brief, twinkling eye contact we'd make as I passed her.

Some of the most difficult days of my life ended on that oval - approaching the final turn towards Denise and her bench, wiping away the tears that go with having no idea what you're doing in your job, how you'll provide for your family, what this incredible woman sees in you. I'd see her from a distance and slow my stride, not because I didn't want to reach her, but because I wanted as much time as possible to drink in the anticipation of being with her - my best friend, my running buddy, the person on earth who's shown me Jesus more than any other has or will. Who has always believed in me. You don't rush that. You cherish it.