Running Explorers: How Does Running Help You Connect With New Locations

Running Explorers: How Does Running Help You Connect With New Places?

The Winning Essays

Last month, we teamed up with Like the Wind, Ciele, and Chance to launch the Run Your Story contest. We posed a simple yet profound question: How does running help you connect with new places? The response was incredible—80 essays from runners across the globe, each offering a unique perspective on the magic of exploring the world on foot. After much deliberation, we selected three winners who, in our eyes, best captured the elusive, transformative power of running as a means of discovery.

Ground Contact Time

1st place by Stephanie Ouimet

There’s this chart on Garmin called “Ground Contact Time”. I scroll down to find it once in a while because it looks like a modern art piece, some kind of ongoing performance painted with my strides in colorful dots, of what could be ink or paint, more or less closer to each other depending on how fast I ran that day. Go on a long run and those dots become real on the canvas of your route: a mitten fallen from a pocket, trees decorated with baubles on a trail, drivers cheering for your run group after a victorious hockey game, an eagle’s nest atop a cedar tree, a kid on the seawall screaming he loves waves in Spanish.

I did not use to run for these experiences. I used to run as punishment, to rule over and dissociate from my body. To block the world out, block myself out. It’s easy to let your mind wander away from you or far inward on a run. But what about remaining grounded? Having a bit of ground contact time? I’ve lived in four big cities in my life and have been a runner in three of them. Last May, I joined a run group in my hometown of Montreal and ran streets and saw urban art I had never seen in my life. It made me realize I simply know the cities I’ve run in better, in a slower, deeper, more intimate way.

People’s first instinct when visiting a new place is often one of quantity over quality. There’s a desire to see the top ten sights, to cram things in a day, to cover ground. Running can slow things down because it scales them down. It brings urban landscapes and natural environments back to a human scale. And I think that’s right. It’s right to feel a little overwhelmed or overstimulated in a big city, to recognize people you know because you can look them in the eyes, to smell food cooking or fish rotting, to hear the frogs in the park and the geese coming back in the spring. It’s right to feel small and fragile atop a mountain overlooking glaciers, to be on high alert at weird sounds or after dusk, to reprimand bears like an impatient parent and to tear up at the alpenglow.

Running heightens the quality of a new place, just like the more you stare at a painting, the more you see. All those dots of colours, all that texture. And the runners out there see each other too. The odd ones out. Artists at work. There’s a universal language in movement, in rituals, in our choice to not be walking, driving or taking the bus around a city. I ran in Lyon, Paris, Melbourne, Orlando, California, Newfoundland and I’ve been acknowledged, been saluted, been brought back to the present moment, back into my body by this nod that says “I see you, I see what you’re doing”. A few times it’s been a rabbit or a deer doing the saluting. But when the nod comes from another human, it doesn’t matter if they aren’t a runner, I know they understand. You surely can’t cover a whole city or a whole country in a few jogs, but I think you can make richer memories of a place by letting your feet immerse you in it, rooting down, rather than wide, into the ground. Those are the gifts running offers in any new location: groundedness and contact. With a place, with others, with ourselves.

Stephanie Ouimet | 1st Place Winner

Runs: And the Places They Bring Me (Back) To

2nd place by Andrea Osorio

“¡Vámanos, mija!” My dad calls to me from up the steep and sandy slope, his words muffled by a breeze that licks my face and carries the sweet scent of oak. I huff meekly in protest, my 7-year old legs carrying me up the last hill of the trail while my lungs burn in the late spring air. And then he’s there, walking the last few meters at my side as we arrive at a view that takes my breath away all over again— all dark greens and blues as we peer down into the Central Californian valley that I call home. “You did great! You’re getting so fast,” Dad says as he digs around in his small running backpack, revealing water bottles and a jumbo-sized orange. I catch my breath and feel the morning sun warming my little limbs, munching on what has to be the juiciest orange slice in the world.

Fast forward, and my dad’s early trail running lessons still play through my mind as I strike out for a run in places far, far away from the manzanita-covered trails of my youth. “Remember to inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth!” The dad-track plays as I swish swish through a muddy jungle path deep in central Nicaragua, somewhat questioning my agreement to explore the neighborhood via run as the humidity threatens to drown me.

The advice to “just hold down your ribs and exhale really hard!” when faced with a side cramp flits through my subconscious, as I jog along a lonely, snow-filled field in rural Netherlands during a semester abroad. I marvel at how a local shepherd creates an intricate dance with his sheepdogs as they herd a cluster of furry cows, feeling like I’ve fallen into a King Arthur legend while running past crumbling castle walls tinged with ice.

Next I find myself in a trail race in Joshua Tree, pain streaking up my calves as we move across soft sand under the desert night sky. It’s an unfamiliar course in an unfamiliar place and I came here utterly alone, battling demons in the aftermath of a heartcrushing breakup. I so desperately wanted to find my strength once again, to remember who I was before a year filled with so many personal challenges. Gritting my teeth and cursing the race organizers, I tell myself that my new goal is just to finish in one-piece. Mile by mile, I let go of my stubborn desire to conquer the run. Gradually, I begin to notice the way the cacti sparkle in the shine of my headlight, the way the moon casts an iridescent glow on the Mars-like hills rising above me. That sense of wonder grows with each stride.

Those memories of effortless awe— of knowing there are beautiful mysteries ahead if you can just keep your head up to see them— these memories begin to flood me with gratitude for my dad who unlocked all this for me. “Power on!”— his #1 saying whenever I was falling behind on a run— reverbrates through my head, asking my mitochondria for just a little more spark, my lungs for just a tad more oxygen. The blanket of high-desert darkness fades from my minds-eye… and I can see little-me running. She’s running with curiosity, with unfiltered joy, with a sureness that never falters. I realize there is no strength to be found out in Joshua Tree, or Washington D.C., or in the Yucatán, or any of the places that I have or will ever run. It lives within me, nurtured by my family, my culture and community, ready to accompany me in exploring whatever lies on the path ahead, around the next curve in the adventure we call life.

Andrea Osorio | 2nd Place Winner

Flying through Running

3rd place by Jesús Martínez

I used to have this recurring dream that started with a suitcase by my side, and I’d enter an airport, ready to travel somewhere new. But the more I walked to my gate, the more the concourse would lengthen. I kept having to climb all these escalators and motorized walkways. The terminal’s corridors grew wider. Each step added distance to my destination. I’d start sprinting, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. Last call, gate closed, flight missed. I’d wake up with the disappointment of once again seeing the plane leave without me.

Later in adulthood, I realized that this dream was a manifestation of being undocumented in the U.S. I yearned to expand my horizons, yet I was stuck within legal boundaries that would not let me move freely. I was grateful to become a U.S. citizen in 2013, and at 18, I felt eager to see the world.This new freedom allowed me to feel more comfortable exploring outside the bounds that had once felt risky. Not having much to spend, I needed to find other ways to explore. In my search, I found running.

In the early days of my running journey, I’d lace up my Nike Free Run 2s and go explore areas that I never saw in my day-to-day life. During undergrad, I discovered a lake in the middle of another college campus in town. I’d passed by it a lot but never got a sense of its true essence. Once I entered the lake’s footpath, I was immediately in awe at the cascading falls juxtaposed with old industrial buildings covered in scattered ivy vines. A bridge led to an unpaved portion of the route that put me deep into the surrounding foliage and made me feel like I was transported to a whole new world. Other runners would pass me by, but I’d fallen in love with this place to the point where I would only notice its beauty. It was on that first lake run that my running started improving, not because of the route’s demanding elevation and technicality, but simply because it taught me how to be in the moment.

My recurring dream started to become less frequent. The more miles I ran, the shorter the walkways and corridors got. Last year I got on a plane to vacation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I stayed right by Avenida 5a. I put my shoes on and started my run on the Avenida’s paved trail. Many miles had been run since undergrad and my trip. But I felt another weight lift off my shoulders. Being able to access a new set of routes, areas, and locations that were once out of reach healed 18 years of feeling stuck. I had run all my miles in the States to practice taking in the breadth of culture, relaxation, and peacefulness that came with the trails of Playacar.

I’ve flowed better with my runs ever since that trip. My flights in real life have taken me to beach runs in Miami, trail runs in Philadelphia, and road races in Puerto Rico. My running aspirations become more possible each day because I get to explore these places through movement. I owe it to my 18-year-old self to find ways to continue leaving my steps worldwide– now that I’m able to reach the gates of my dreams, this time without the fear of missing my flight.