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​The 35 Types Of Runs I Have Gone On In The Past Year Or So​
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I pushed the start button on my running watch with my right hand, two thick envelopes in my left hand, and jogged across the busy street when I saw an opening in traffic. I wasn’t sure where my run would take me, aside from a stop at the blue USPS box outside the grocery store seven-tenths of a mile away, where I’d pause to drop the envelopes and then run off.

As I dropped the envelopes in the box, I thought: I wonder if any of those famous fast runners I follow on Instagram do this sort of thing? Like do they ever have to squeeze their running in around real-life stuff?

A friend who is a coach has been helping me lately with a very low-maintenance program, in which he creates weekly training plans for me to do, which has been an interesting experience for me, A Guy Who Has Never Used The Word “Training” When Talking About Running And Has Mostly Just “Gone Out Running” Several Times A Week And Thought That Worked Pretty Well. So over the past few weeks I have been getting used to one or two runs per week being “strides,” another run being “hill repeats,” another being “intervals,” all of which are terms serious runners have in their vocabulary, but are new to me.

So I was thinking about the types of runs I normally do, and I started coming up with names for them.

1. Race

2. Run with strides, a new thing for me

3. Run with hill repeats, also a new thing for me

4. Run with intervals, also a new thing

5. Long run

6. Run in which I ride the bus with my kid to his school and then run somewhere after that

7. Run in which I put my kid in a jogging stroller, run to his school while pushing the stroller and then run pushing the empty stroller for 1.5-5 miles afterward

8. Run in which I put my kid in a jogging stroller, run to his school while pushing the stroller, but then he wants to get out about halfway there, so I let him out, and we kind of run for the last half-mile or three-quarters of a mile to his school, and then I run pushing the empty stroller for 1.5-5 miles afterward

9. Run before the sun comes up because that’s the only time I’m going to get to do it that day

10. Run after the sun goes down because that’s the only time I have to do it that day and/or I procrastinated way too long

11. Run during which I improvise a very convoluted route around my neighborhood without crossing a single busy street just to get to 3 or 4 miles total

12. Trail run during which I have a bathroom near-emergency and make a detour to the University Center, the building on the college campus that I believe is most often open when I need it

13. Road run during which I decide at some point in the first mile or so that I’m feeling pretty good so why not try to run my fastest 5K or 10K time ever (according to my Strava) and probably not succeed

14. Trail run in which I decide I am not going to let myself walk any of the uphill parts, including of grades of 20% or more

15. Road run with one packable grocery bag in each hand, ending at the grocery store, where I do my shopping while trying to not drip sweat on the produce and walk home with two very heavy shopping bags

16. Run that I loosely plan around the location of a USPS mailbox so I can drop off some mail at some point, preferably earlier rather than later

17. Run during which I carry a small item I need to drop off at a friend’s house (hard drive, house key, paperback book, hot sauce), run to their house, drop off the item, and then run 2-10 more miles

18. Run during which I run completely out of water a couple miles from a trailhead and detour to Grizzly Grocery to purchase a large can of coconut water and a bottle of water, chug both on the sidewalk outside the store and then run the final 1.5 miles home

19. Run where I end up at a bakery to meet a friend for coffee and a pastry, pause my watch for an hour and then restart it to run the final mile home

20. Road run in which I end at the gym, already dripping sweat before I even lift any of the heavy objects supplied by the gym for fitness purposes

21. Road run that begins at the gym, a running plan that definitely decreases my mojo for running because my legs feel quite heavy already

22. Trail run in which I decide to run as much vertical gain as possible, which of course ends up being a lot of hiking, so much so that I have a dilemma about calling it “a trail run”

23. Trail run with a friend, during which we talk so much that I forget to ingest any calories for the 2-hour duration of the run

24. Road run with a friend, during which the friend runs a bit faster than I do, keeping me out of breath, so I ask them lots of questions to keep them talking so I can survive our run

25. Trail run with Hilary, which happens only when one of our parents are visiting and hanging out with Jay so we can have some time together, time which we apparently decide is best spent running

26. Run during which I forget there is a college football game taking place a couple hundred feet from the trailhead, then shrug and figure I’ll just run through the tailgate scene, because the game appears to be in progress, which means most people will be inside the stadium already

27. Run during which I forget there is a college football game taking place a couple hundred feet from the trailhead, then shrug and figure I’ll just run through the tailgate scene, which turns out to be a very bad idea because the game hasn’t started yet and I end up running through crowds of people with very different goals than I have for this afternoon

28. Run on a public golf course which is not closed for the season but it’s cold so no one is playing, so I get a couple miles of running on what feels like lush carpet

29. Run that starts at a trailhead where I’ve gone hiking with my family and elected to run home instead of riding in the car with them, thereby optimizing my time

30. Trail run that I think should clock in at about 8 miles but ends up being 11 miles

31. Run that I plan on being 7 or more miles but bail after 5 miles

32. Run that ends at a friend’s house for Saturday brunch

33. Run during which I see someone I know who is also out running and decide to run with them for a few minutes so we can catch up a bit

34. Run during which I see someone I know who is not running, so I just stop and talk to them for a few minutes before continuing on my run

35. Run during which I see someone I know but we both kind of need to keep moving, so we communicate this in verbal or nonverbal signals and keep going our separate ways

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