"Running Home: A Memoir” By Katie Arnold

I started taking Zumba classes at my YMCA a few years ago and found it nothing but fun. I loved the heavy Latin beat, smiles on everyone’s faces and the way participants moved together in unison despite different fitness levels. And then, rather suddenly, in the summer of 2016 my dad died from complications of a stroke. Three years later I have not been able to do Zumba since. This is all to say that grief and fitness are very strange bedfellows. With the joy gone from dancing, I went back to doing hot yoga because it felt difficult, challenging and mind-numbingly familiar. It felt right, and sweating was therapeutic. I would watch twenty-year-old girls run out of the yoga room in frustration, but I stayed inside triumphant. In “Running Home: A Memoir” by Katie Arnold, she chronicles the loss of her father which triggered her passion and commitment for long distance running. Arnold, an ultrarunner and contributor at “Outside” magazine, trained for a 50K after her dad died from cancer. “I prefer slow, long runs to speed work, and hills to flats. No two weeks are ever the same. Grief has its own topography, jagged and unpredictable. In the beginning it was like dragging myself up a vertical surface, the surface loose and slippery, trying not to slip backwards into darkness.” Her father was a photographer for “National Geographic Magazine,” and their relationship was complicated as were the many relationships he had with women other than her mother and his second wife. But the running helps lift her to a perspective where she can not only see her father clearly but also find the strength to hold the grief at a steady pace, while raising her two young daughters. If you have ever lost a parent you will see yourself in Arnold’s strength as well as her struggles. “Running Home” is not only beautifully written but also a road map about grief, loss and the benefits of exercise. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.