Mary Louise Kelly, a host of NPR’s All Things Considered on weekday afternoons, has a regular radio audience of more than 14 million listeners. But her running? That’s a largely solitary—and silent—ritual.
Kelly, 49, was raised in Atlanta, with a father who was a marathoner. He dragged her and her younger brother to every holiday Turkey Trot or Jingle Bell Jog. On July 4, it was the Peachtree Road Race. “It was not optional,” Kelly told Runner’s World.
By high school, however, she began to run for herself, and she’s kept at it through the years as a way to clear her head and help with her writing. (Kelly is also the author of two novels, The Bullet and Anonymous Sources.) During the pandemic, when she doesn’t have to commute, she’s been as devoted to it as ever. She’ll have a cup of coffee, then leave her home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., while her teenage sons are still asleep, knowing a second cup of coffee awaits her on her return.
Kelly shared some details of her routine—including the reasons why she doesn’t wear headphones—on October 12, the day after she completed the virtual Army Ten-Miler.
I grew up with a dad who loved to run. That was part of the family ritual. My mom was allowed a pass, but my brother and I, this is what we were going to do. We’re both still runners. He and I ran in Atlanta the Thanksgiving Day Half Marathon [last year]. My dad’s running days are probably mostly behind him, but [my brother and I] ran it together and kind of dedicated it to Dad. The tradition continues.
I’ve lived in D.C. for years now, and always wanted to run one of the two iconic 10-mile races here, which to me were the Army Ten-Miler in the fall and Cherry Blossom in the spring. They’re both hard to get in to.
I had had it in my head I’m going to somehow get a bib for the Army Ten-Miler this year. And first they delayed registration, and then they finally [made it] virtual. I thought, “I don’t know how that’s quite going to work. It’s not going be the same, but I said I was going to run it, so by God, I’m going to run it.”
I got what for me was a pretty great time. I was tracking 9-and-a-half-minute miles. I went out by myself through Rock Creek Park, five miles up, five miles back. It was different, but I downloaded the official app and it was tracking me and telling me where I was.
There was a small but mighty NPR team that ran. We were sending each other pictures and times. That was kind of nice, to feel just a little bit of support, there’s somebody else out there.
I guess I kind of really started running for myself in high school, mostly on my own. I did one season of high school track in 9th grade. I was not great. But it was fun. I ran the mile. I think my fastest time ever was a 6:56. I couldn’t run it now.
But I don’t quit. The way to keep to running is you don’t stop running. One foot at a time, somehow, one foot in front of the other becomes 10 miles. That’s kind of how I’ve always thought about it.
The one change in my life forced by the pandemic that has been positive: I used to have a commute in the morning. Drop my kids at school, drop my husband at his office, carry on to my office, and by the time I parked and got to my desk, it was 45 minutes. My commute now is from my bedroom to my study, so, like, 10 seconds.
I spent the first few weeks of working from home just showing up with my laptop 45 minutes earlier than usual. And then I thought, “Actually, no. I’m reclaiming this time.” I won’t say I have made it every single morning, but pretty close to every morning, I have gone out and put in a few miles. Sometimes a walk. I get outside whatever the weather is. I don’t have a treadmill, and I’m not going to the gym.
I can’t imagine now not having that punctuation to my day. I run a few miles, two or three times a week, and when I’m training for something bigger, I’ll do a longer run on the weekend.
If I don’t get it done in the morning, as often as not, it doesn’t get done. I walk around in my running clothes un-showered all day long, and then have dinner and a glass of wine. And then I’m like, “This is not happening.”
I have two teenage boys who are both terrific athletes. They play soccer and lacrosse. They are not particularly inclined to go out for a jog. A few years ago they got faster than me at sprinting and I thought, “Okay, but I can still hold them off over several miles because of my whole I’m-never-going-to-quit thing.” I did run a 5K with both boys two summers ago now and they both just trounced me.
Quite a few of the places I’ve traveled for work are tricky to go out for a jog in. I was in Tehran at the start of this year, and as a woman, you can’t just throw on your shorts and run out the door.
I left NPR and daily journalism a few years back to focus on writing fiction, and our family moved twice to Italy, because it was this moment where the kids were young enough and I was working but could be anywhere because I was writing a novel.
We moved to the hills above Florence, which are about the most glorious place to run on earth other than that they are super, super hilly. You develop legs of steel trying to drag yourself up these slopes. But that was a huge part of my routine there, spending every morning writing, and then I would get to a point where I was stuck, and right before lunch I would log a few miles and clear my head and figure out what it was I was trying to say. Come back and quickly type it and then fix some kind of lunch. Running through the Tuscan hills was about as close as I have come to heaven on earth.
At least once a week I try to squeeze in either a Pilates or yoga class, now virtual. I’m Zooming in. I’ve been a devotee of Down Dog Yoga here in D.C. for years. Fuel Body Lab is my Pilates studio. I kind of alternate, depending on the class schedule.
That’s it. I don’t bike, I don’t swim. I wish I had time to play tennis. I never do. It’s the thing everybody loves about running who is a runner. You can do it whenever it suits you, and you’re not trying to meet anybody else or book a court or find your racket. You can just lace up and go.
I tend to run alone. I’m a writer and an editor and I’ll be trying to write something at my keyboard and the words just don’t come. If I go out, that moment you hit a mile in, you start to sweat, and the blood is pumping and the words come—it doesn’t happen when you’re jogging with somebody else and chitchatting.
I don’t listen to music, I don’t listen to podcasts. It’s in part because I like that time, I guard it, in terms of sorting through things I’m trying to write. My kids have learned if I’m coming in from a run, I’ll open the back door and they’ll need something or have a question and I’ll be like, “Hang on. Give me a second.” Because I need to just run to my laptop before I’ve forgotten the great sentence I’ve created in my mind while I was running.
The other thing for me is, I have severe hearing loss. I wear hearing aids. And they cannot get wet. I can’t sweat with them. So I am running not able to hear everything around me. I can just about hear if a bike is coming up behind me if the person is kind enough to shout, “On your left” or ring their bell or something. I can’t hear cars coming.
So it seemed like playing music on top of that would be a really lousy idea. I don’t listen to anything for safety reasons. When I run and I kind of hit that zone, it’s silent to me. It’s just my space and my time. While I dearly wish I had normal hearing, I kind of treasure that, too. My little space in the world.
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
