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The smells of running are often the
smells of the places we’ve run. The
brine of ocean and sand, the fresh, green
aromas of cool summer nights and wet
grass when the sprinklers click on. The
gladiatorial fume of a polyurethane track
baking on a hot day.
For Katie Arnold, an ultrarunner and
author of the new memoir Running Home,
her formative time as a young athlete
living alone in Boulder, Colorado, will
forever be tied to the butterscotch-like
wafts from Ponderosa pines. “It smells
like summer and heat and freedom
and just being alive in the mountains,
moving,” she says. Now, living in Santa
Fe, New Mexico, and running on trails,
the dominant smell Arnold experiences
is of sagebrush. “It’s a powerful, very
sweet smell that reminds me of all the
times I’ve spent on Western rivers, and
that you have to go with the current,”
she says. Sometimes, Arnold will even
stop to clip a sprig of sage and put it in
her running vest.
If you blindfolded me and led me on-
to Philadelphia’s Belmont Plateau trail,
where I raced nearly every week during
cross-country season, I think I’d still be
able to tell you where I was. I still remem-
ber how the dirt smells damper and earth-
ier when you enter the shadowy section
in the forest. Come back out to the foot
of Flagpole Hill, and I know the ground
will give off a dry, stony, sun-blasted aura.
Thinking of those races now, I remember
the after-smells, too—the sweet scent of
lemon-lime Gatorade, yeasty soft pretzels,
underripe bananas, the hint of cotton ball
inside an ibuprofen bottle.
Beyond scents imprinted by repeti-
tion—my IcyHot, Katie’s sage—some
running smells stick because we link
them to something we encountered for
the first time: the coppery, metallic burn
inside your nostrils when finishing your
first truly brutal interval workout, a
fragrant platter of huevos rancheros after
setting a 10K PR.Other smells are inextricably tied to
ritual. Flashing back to my last marathon
training, I get a whiff of the cucumber-
mint energy gel I brought with me on
long runs. It is the scent of relief: medi-
cine, dosed out in tiny salves, for inter-
minable treks.
Certain running scents are visceral, the
kind that make you wrinkle your nose:
sweaty socks, damp shoes, stale sweat
that’s turned to salty crust on your skin,
reminders that we’re still part animal.
This is something subtle that running
does for us, beyond the toned legs and
feel-good brain chemicals; running re-
immerses us in the physical world, and in a
way that our jobs, at least the white-collar
ones, do not. Workplaces are scrubbed of
appreciable sights and smells, leaving only
the most anodyne impressions: hand soap,
linoleum counters, beige walls, f luorescent
screens. These aren’t the environments
we were built to live in. Our senses were
honed over centuries to navigate the world
and survive by sensory data. When we
run, we reawaken to the brightness and
clarity of that drive.
These scents, acrid and sweet, create
an amalgamated “smell of running” that,
while unique for every athlete, is surpris-
ingly universal from the gear, events, and
trails we share. We recognize the smell of
running like a second nature: on a bus to
Hopkinton or the trails in Leadville, there
it is. But I wonder if we could describe
it to an outsider: Take a deep whiff of
a just-unboxed pair of shoes. Run on a
sweltering day and catch the scent your
shorts release when you peel them off for
a shower. Pick up a fresh bagel, inhale
deeply. Find a local road race and arrive
early. Walk by the trash can full of empty
coffee cups—the porta-potties too. Stick
your face above a plastic swag bag and
sniff. Hold the little metal safety pins
up to your nose. Go to the starting line a
minute before the gun goes off and test
the air, the hot-blooded, heart-pounding
smell of anticipation.IF
MARATHON
MAJORS
WERE
SCENTED
CANDLESTOKYO
Miso and sweaty pavementBOSTON
Dunkin’ coffee and low tideLONDON
Very fried fish and dieselBERLIN
Grilled wurst and too much beerCHICAGO
Italian beef sandwiches
and river dregsNEW YORK CITY
Dollar slices and subway fumes