Orange Blossom Trail

Running is just as bad for my health as it is good.  I have an unhealthy obsession. When I am training for a race, there are very few things I let get in my way.  Injuries are a good example of this.  I pulled some muscle or some nerve or disc, something is out of place and I have pain in my right leg from my butt to heel.  I haven’t called a doctor, I haven’t rested it, I ran 10 miles Wednesday morning.  The pain really isn’t that bad.  I only hobble if I have been sitting for too long. 

The other way that running is hazardous to my health is that I insist on running outdoors (when the weather permits), and I don’t always know where I am going.  I was in downtown Orlando this week.  I had planned to run around Lake Eola.  It’s a pretty little park with a sinkhole in the middle that is now a lake. 

I discovered on a 5k run Tuesday night that the trail around the lake is only .8 miles.  While the scenery is interesting with a pretty fountain and lots of ducks and swans, it was not interesting enough to run 12.5 laps.  I had considered driving over to the Disney resort area for my long run, but I didn’t really have time. Waiting until I got home and running in the snow and ice, or on the dreadmill, didn’t seem like a great option.

I have driven from downtown to the Universal Studios/Premium Outlet area before and it seemed fine.  It was about 10 miles from my hotel. I plugged it into Google maps with the plan to run five miles towards Universal and 5 miles back. It was very early, still dark, and not a lot of people were around. I read an article in Runners World at some point that insisted that it was safer to run in the early morning than in the evening.  The article indicated that most incidents that happen to runners happen after 5pm.

The downtown area of Orlando was pleasant enough. I discovered some restaurants that looked interesting for a future visit, I ran by the Amway Center, home of the Orlando Magic.  I often think that the best way to discover a city is on foot.

Then I crossed the railroad tracks, literally.  The tracks presented a symbol of a socioeconomic divide.  As I followed the Google Map prompts into uncharted territory, I heard a man on a bike laughing at me.  He was laughing in a friendly kind of way.  He looked like Morgan Freeman, but he sounded like James Earl Jones. He asked me if I was feeling ok this morning.  I responded that I was, he kept laughing and informed me I was in “black territory.”  That was my warning that I was in a place that I didn’t belong.  I panicked a little. I never thought he was a threat, and he was not, but I debated about what should I do.  I could hear my mom in the back of my head lecturing me about being safe and not running alone in strange places  If I turned around at that point, not only was I only a mile or so into my run, but it would make me look less confident and more vulnerable. That was the last vibe that I wanted to give anyone.  I decided to keep running, hoping that the streets would become less ominous. They did not. 

 

I truly believe that no matter what your status in life or the color of your skin, we have more in common as human beings than we have differences. On this run, I passed homeless people, prostitutes, and drug addicts.   My circle of friends and family includes alcoholics and drug addicts; it includes mental illness, it includes people at or below the poverty line. I’m not naive enough to think that I could never be homeless.  I really do my best not to judge people.  Everyone has a story. Yet, seeing all of this come together at a time and place I wasn’t expecting, came somewhat as a shock to my system.

Once I got to three miles, I decided to head back to the lake and finish up my run there.  I don’t know if there was ever any real threat to my personal safety.  Most people I met were friendly, smiled and said “hi.”  A drag queen offered me fifty cents for a cigarette. I had on running attire and an arm band holding my iphone, I am not sure why I looked like a good candidate for a cigarette sale. A female prostitute told me I looked hot. I guess I need to take complements wherever I can get them at this point in my life. One guy told me to be careful and not go down a specific road because there were often mean Rottweiler’s on the loose. I felt like there were a lot of eyes peering at me just wanting to know why I was in a place where I clearly wasn’t wanted. It was uncomfortable on a lot of levels.

 

When I got back, I googled Orange Blossom Trail, aka “OBT.”  The southern stretch of OBT is where I did much of my run.  Not only was I surprised to learn that Orlando is one of the most dangerous cities in the country, but that Orange Blossom Trail is one of the most dangerous sections of the city.

I ended up on OBT for a reason.  I have been feeling underappreciated in a lot of ways lately. I’m tired.  I resent that fact that so many things in my life seem like a daily battle that I just can’t win. My run Wednesday morning helped to snap me out of that mentality.  Being on OBT was like God just telling me to stop whining already. It was a reality check.

I went to law school for many reasons, one of which was to make a difference.  There are many pro-bono opportunities in the legal arena. I have great admiration for people who have started running groups that have helped a specific population overcome a difficult challenge; such as Next Steps. I want to do these things. I don’t do them because I feel like I am too busy, too overwhelmed with everything in my life.  These are simply excuses, and I have lots of them.

I am where I am today because people were willing to help me.  I’ll be going back to OBT, or rather its Hartford equivalent, but not as a scared, crazy, defenseless woman running through the streets alone.  I’ll be going back to help, and hopefully in a meaningful way.  And yes, Mom, I promise to be a little more careful about where I run when I am alone and away from home.