Message from RJ Benson
From 1997; between the last darkroom and digital. . .
Running has been an important part of my life since childhood. Even during the period when I was on the high school track and cross country teams complaining about the workouts, I enjoyed the act of running. I stopped after I left high school and started again in college. I had always been a fair weather runner. The first snow meant that I’d put away the shoes until the first thaw in the spring. That changed when KD and I got our first dog. She enjoyed running with me and wasn’t ready to quit because snow was on the ground. So I became a year around runner and found it to be very enjoyable. That dog was beginning to lose interest in those daily runs about the age of 2 and we lost her to a car accident shortly after that. Ali came along and enjoyed going with me but was more enamored with the categorizing the smells than covering ground. Then came a little black lab named Carbon.
The perfect running partner.
She made the early association between me putting on running shoes and getting out for the run. She would not let me out of her sight after those shoes were on. Her enthusiasm, on many days, was the difference between my taking a “day off” and going out through the neighborhood. Turns out she was almost always right. The decision to go was best for both of us. We spent hours and literally thousands of miles together doing something I love.
We had to say goodbye to my running partner on Wednesday. She was four months shy of 13 and according to the vets at Michigan State, had the insides of a 6 year old (a testament to running, I hope). Even in her last days, she expected to go for a run after my tour of the neighborhood with the younger dogs. I obliged her by a 3 block trot to the nearby school. She was still out in front of me on the way there, and when I let her off the leash, she would trot rather than walk when she wanted to cover more places to see and smell. The return back home was always slow in the past months, but the next day she was ready to go again and still wouldn’t leave my sight when I had those shoes on.
I could share many stories with you, but I will finish in the observation that I will never run as far and as often as I did with Carbon and expect that I will never have a more devoted and engaging companion on my running tours. For me, there is nothing more rewarding than a pain free run through the woods in spring or through a snow covered neighborhood on a silent night. It is physical poetry. I feel privileged to have been able to share that with a companion that loved it as much as I do. As long as I am able to put one running shoe in front of another, I will be reminded that I once had
The perfect running partner.
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