Nursing an identity as a runner for decades despite participation that felt torturous and intermittent, Chris Onstad reveals his on-again, off-again relationship with the sport. In this piece for The Baffler, soaked in sweat and equal parts hyperbole and self-deprecation, Onstad explains how walking became his gateway drug to running during the pandemic.
I maxed out at 43.8 miles on July 25, 2020, which took about fourteen hours of unbroken walking. I limped the last ten miles, the sides of my heels raw like a peeled shallot, in a state I can best describe as “too proud to call an Uber.” My calves above the sock line were satisfyingly gray from soot; below it, a virginal ivory. I had walked the most that could be walked in one summer day’s light: the summit of that restless urge.
I estimate I logged over a thousand miles during that five-month period. Using a browser, I mapped the route from memory after each day’s walk and started posting the daily mileage on Instagram, proving I’d finally committed to the new identity. Walking was a sustainable way for the fitness-minded man to gracefully acknowledge his age, I told myself as my lavender fanny pack and I silently mocked the sprinting ninnies. I even started posting reviews of nonalcoholic beers, like some warped lunatic who doesn’t realize everybody can see right through his midlife crisis.
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