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The last time I ran a mile was in college in the winter of 2010, the weather in Los Angeles was finally cool enough to run outside on the school track. I asked for a pair of Nike running shoes for Christmas because I’d never had running shoes before; these ones had pink laces, a small hole in the heel for the running chip to track my distance and pace.
I was slow, running ten and eleven-minute miles, but this didn’t matter because I was doing something I’d told myself I’d never do, training for a race even. In middle school, my peers poked fun at me during PE classes for how my body bounced while running the quarterly mile test. I laughed along, not minding because I hated running and had no desire to be good at it.
Then, in college, I decided I wanted to try. I found there to be something melodic about running in circles every evening with no destination to be reached. I stopped where I started and started where I stopped. The only end was the o…
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