At 66, Karin Miller is not the runner she used to be. And she’s cool with that. She ran her very first race in her 20s, and through courses all over the country and the world, she has seen her gait slow, her body change, and evidence of age show up in aches and pains that can’t be wished away.

This year has been particularly stressful, including a recent illness and dealing with a tree that fell on her house and “demolished the whole upstairs,” she said. But for Miller, recovery looks like pulling on her shoes and jumping on her treadmill or heading out around her Salisbury neighborhood. She will be one of tens of thousands of folks running, walking and shuffling their way toward the finish line of the various races at this weekend’s Baltimore Running Festival. For an athlete of her age and experience, winning isn’t about where you place but whether you finish.

“It’s hard as you get older. You just don’t get faster, and it’s really hard to let that go,” Miller said. “This year is really about just trying to do the things that bring me joy. And if it stresses me out, that’s not joy.”

I could have written those words myself. They’re like my own biography. I, too, will be out on the road this weekend, navigating the 10K distance from Camden Yards to Druid Hill Park and back again. It will be my first organized race in five years, having worked my way back from injury, pandemic weight gain, menopause and the decision that my running days were behind me. That decision has been reversed. I am not as fast or thin as I used to be — and I was never all that fast or thin in the first place. But I’m out there, so I’m a runner. Let’s go.

As I’ve written before, the idea of runners as exclusively young gazelle-like creatures with impeccable musculature has been fading for a while. According to LiveStrong.com, the average age of a runner has gone up from 34 years old in 1986 to 39 in 2019, and the fastest marathon finishers are between 30 and 50. Get this: There’s a British man named Fauja Singh who didn’t start running until he was 89, and at 100, became the oldest person to ever finish a full marathon. (He has now officially unlaced his shoes — at 113. I’m impressed and jealous at the same time. If I’m still alive at 113, I will be curled up with a cat, eating soup and not moving.)

Miller is decades younger than Singh, but her running resumé is still notable to me, not just because it’s extensive but because she’s so committed. Since her initial races in her 20s, she took decades off to focus on marriage and motherhood.

“It wasn’t until I was 50 and had gotten divorced and finished my master’s and was raising three children that I decided running might help,” she said. “And it did. I keep finding that when life gets crazy and I stop running, I’m miserable. Even if it’s just a half-hour, four days a week, I’m a much happier person.”

Since then, Miller has been on a roll, attempting to do a race in every state — she’s up to about 17 — and has also run in Ireland and Canada. Her roster so far in 2024 has included a half-marathon that went from Arkansas to Mississippi. She was scheduled to run the 10k this weekend like me, but dropped down to the 5K distance when she got ill. Some have discouraged her from participating at all, but she knows her own joy.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term muscle memory, which describes the feeling of your body recalling how to do a task it has done before without having to think about it. Being a runner at this age relies on instinct, and when I’m out there sweaty and exhausted in a tough mile, I have to remind myself that I’ve done this before. But I still must accept that I am sometimes remembering different muscles, on a different body. I’m still gonna get there, but it won’t be as pretty.

“It’s hard when you get older,” Miller acknowledged. “There was a 10K when I was dead last, but also I got first place in my age group because I was the only one in my age group.” That’s one way to win! My only medal ever was in a race where all the good runners were resting for a bigger race the next day, and, girl, I am proud of that medal. It’s mine.

This is not to say that once you age, you suddenly stop noticing people passing you, comparing yourself not only to them but to yourself, five or 10 or 30 years ago. “No matter how much you say ‘I’m just running for me,’ you’re also still just running with the ‘me’ you used to be, and it’s been a real struggle to let it go. I’m getting better about that,” Miller said.

So is there an end date to her running life? “Unless I absolutely don’t have a choice, I don’t see one,” she said. “What they say is to keep moving, and this is how I’m going to keep moving. I’m a happier person when I run. I’m a fat old lady, and I’m slow. I sometimes go through things when I feel self-conscious and I’m embarrassed to go down the street, but I tell myself, ‘That’s your mean girl inside you.’ ”

Mean girls exist to make you feel less than, and if you ignore them, they go away. So we ignore them, lace up, and get out there.

“It makes me feel seen,” Miller said. “When people are just cheering me on, it feels good.”