When Running Became Therapy

At 7:07 am on Tuesday, January 17, my mother died of cancer. Six days later, I moved my father, who has dementia, from his home of over seventy years in Oregon to a memory care facility five minutes from our home in Iowa.

My wife and I made four trips to Oregon over these past three months to visit my mother as well as make preparations to move my father.

Each day brought its own stress as we witnessed the continual deterioration of my mother’s physical condition while trying to help my father whose condition prevented him from truly grasping the pending loss of a wife of sixty-three years.

What I’m describing is scarcely unique. There are certain aspects to all of this that we face with the aging of our parents. The exact details don't matter. It's always an ordeal where there are no perfect answers. We simply manage as best we can.

Throughout all of this, I ran nearly every day that I was in Roseburg, Oregon. I would get up at 4 am, perform all my prerequisite stretches, sync my earbuds to whatever music I wanted, strap on the belt with my cell phone and walk quietly out of the retirement home where we had a room near my parents, step into the darkness outside and start running.

My initial motivation stemmed from a stubborn desire to maintain the training schedule established by my running coach. I had no intention of allowing any of this to impact my conditioning, particularly as our daily schedules were turned upside down.

Another part of me used the morning runs to demonstrate to my mother that I could balance the responsibilities falling upon me with both my professional and personal life. That meant addressing work away from my office that in hindsight could have either waited or been handled by one of my office colleagues.

Running this early also allowed me to utilize well-lit sidewalks on the busiest streets of this small city with little traffic to worry about. With mild weather that rarely fell below freezing, most mornings were shrouded in low clouds or fog, adding a stillness to the solitude of my early morning runs.

Although these runs started like any other run with my thoughts on the workout, it wasn't long before my mind shifted to the events of that previous day, processing what had occurred, determining how much further thought it warranted or if it was best to let it go. From there, those thoughts turned to the upcoming day. Out of what appeared a dozen urgent priorities, what was it that Amy and I actually needed to address and what could fall down the ladder in priority? This strategizing allowed a release of the same stress that had kept me awake only a couple hours before.

It soon became clear that these morning runs served as more than exercise. As they helped deal with everything I was experiencing. Those runs became the highlight of my day. Once they were completed, I felt more at ease and better prepared for the upcoming day.

Having lived several years in Roseburg, I was quite familiar with all the roads and bicycle paths. This led to journeys along routes I hadn’t ran for decades. As indicated in the pictures above and below, a couple of those routes proved more questionable choices, given that they veered away from the main streets into more secluded, less secure areas. (Those exploratory detours ended when one of my sojourns took me past a homeless camp on a dimly lit bicycle trail.)

Yet even when nostalgia inspired me to revisit those areas, thoughts of the past gave way quickly to those of my current situation, helping me manage everything. Even when I had speed work scheduled as part the run, my mind incorporated this process. It was no surprise that I experienced more stress on the days I wasn't scheduled to run. The vast majority of my preparation for the words I said at my mother’s service were accomplished during a six-mile run on a foggy morning.

None of this removed the pain of knowing that my mother was dying an awful death or that my father would be forced to leave what he considered "God's Country" to live in an unknown facility halfway across the country. But those miles allowed me to keep all of that in the proper perspective and know that we were doing the best we could under the circumstances.

This routine provided the only stability during a day where any number of issues or problems could arise. All of which made me that much more determined to maintain it. I felt a clear frustration with my father when he had an episode that caused me to miss a workout - even though my rational mind knew that blaming someone with dementia for such an outburst is akin to blaming some with a cold for sneezing. And bear in mind that the life I've had is stems a large part from the hard work my father did during his life to provide those opportunities.

There were also moments during those cold, damp mornings when I wondered about my focus on running. Was it selfish? Should that time have been devoted otherwise? My wife proved herself a rock star throughout all of this. Being a far more natural caregiver than myself, I wondered if I should be doing more? Was having a good race at the upcoming Red Flannel Run or St. Paddy’s Half Marathon really all that important?

During those moments, I would tell myself that what I was doing made sense in terms of both my physical and mental health. They were brief times that belonged to me when every other second belonged to someone else. Looking back, I would do the same again.

But, as I said previously, there isn’t a rulebook for circumstances such as this. What may be right for me isn’t necessarily the same for anyone else. I also know that I’m far from alone in facing tragedies of this nature. What are your thoughts?

This is a picture of Roseburg, Oregon, taken from the Retirement Center where we stayed during our visits to my parents.