A Run To Remember

Running is a big, big hobby out here. Any day of the week, driving around the neighborhood is made more interesting by the need to be on the lookout for an assortment of more-or-less athletic types out to Enjoy Nature and Get Fit.

So there they are, risking knee and back injury, pounding the pavement, iPods plugged in. They're everywhere. And, somehow, I've become one of 'em.

It all started in January when I did the usual annual thing - this year I resolve to lose weight, get in shape, blah blah blah - and this time, I mean it! Well, actually, it's gone better than I expected. I've taken off some weight - just enough to force me to buy all new clothes, such a horror - and I've started an exercise plan. For some reason, and maybe it's the perceived peer pressure of all these disturbingly fit people around me or the nearly weekly charity 5ks that happen on the East End, I decided I needed to start running.

The reason this makes no sense is that while I've never been seriously overweight, I've also never been in anything like good physical condition since maybe my college days. We're talking getting winded on long flights of stairs, here. No excuse, I just never liked to exercise. But here I am in the Hamptons, with all those miles of beaches to walk on and all that. People come out here for the weekend from The City and can't wait to go for a run outside.

Well, the village is really very scenic. There are many things that are blooming at the moment (which makes me sneeze). There is also a vast array of insect and other life (prone to attack at any moment) living in the flowers and privet hedges (which are doing their best to take over the sidewalks). And it's social - there are lots of (slow moving and hazardous) walkers out to enjoy the day, often walking their (alternately yappy, excitable, or downright frightening) dogs. There are even bicyclists (who, contrary to local law, like to ride on the sidewalks, probably to avoid the potentially homocidal drivers) along the way.

Nonetheless, compared to the average treadmill/cardio room of your average NYC gym - think rats on a wheel, except sweatier - this probably seems like pure runner's bliss. And, unlike a NYC taxi, the drivers here are just oblivious, rather than actively aggressive.

But all that is just training for the Main Event, because somehow I decided along the way that I needed a Goal. So that's how I found myself with several hundred fitness nuts and athletes out at Cooper's Beach a few weeks back for that runner's rite of passage known as the 5k. For $20, you get the fun of getting up early on a Saturday morning to go running down the road and back for just over three miles with a bunch of people who can move much, much faster than you. And you get a t-shirt.

The course started at the beach and proceeded down Dune Road for just over a mile and a half, then turning and returning to the start (which seems a little depressing and pointless if you think about it too much). This gave me and my running companion ample opportunity to watch the leaders zoom past us, and the long stream of folks who were way ahead of us in the pack.

We made it, and we contributed our $20 to what I'm sure was a very worthy cause. The endorphins are clearly affecting my thinking, as I'm beginning to have fantasies of a 10k. I can only hope that sanity or maybe cold weather will stop me.