Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Why I Run: An Answer in Three Parts

I’ve recently been trying to answer the following two questions: Why did I start running? and Why do I continue running? To me, the answer to these two questions is the same. The reasons I started running are the same reasons I continue to run. Instead of these two separate questions, I choose to answer the single question, Why I Run.

Part I – Why I Run? My Dad.

The first part of this answer starts when I was a little kid.

Sure, I ran around as a kid. I ran on the playground. I ran on the T-ball field and I ran on the soccer field. This isn’t to say I was a runner but rather that all little kids run. On top of this, all little kids enjoy running. Watch a little kid’s face as he or she chases after you. Running is fun. Yet, it wasn’t something I was conscious of as something people “do.”

For me, the notion of running as something a person “does” wasn’t planted on the playground or the sports field. It started at home and on the surrounding streets.

I remember, distinctly remember, my Dad going out for runs on occasion. He would suit up in his sweatshirts and head out the door. He would come back sweaty and tired. I don’t remember a time when I actually saw him running but I remember the before and after.

Now, I can’t even tell you if he went out for runs with any sort of regularity but I was drawn to the idea of just going out for a run. I was fascinated that this was something that people did, “went out for runs.” My Dad planted the seed of running.

Later, or perhaps at the same time, I don’t know, I encountered running again through a woman in the neighborhood. This woman was the mother of some kids in the neighborhood and I remember she started running after she and the father separated. I must have been in 5th or 6th grade, waiting with all of the other kids in the neighborhood at the bus stop, and I started noticing her slipping out of her house and starting her runs before the school bus came to pick us kids up. If the timing was right, I’d often notice her again as we rode by in the school bus, always amazed at how far down the road she had run.

Did she run everyday? In my memory she did but I can’t be sure. Was the separation or divorce the cause? I have linked the two in my mind. I do remember that she continued to run. I would still see her running out of the neighborhood when I was in middle school and even in high school. I don’t even know how far she ran. Was it always the same mileage, the same route? Was she training for something? I don’t know the answers and I never even thought to ask these questions. It didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now.

What does matter is that once again, I was fascinated. Runners, with their consistency and habit and simplicity, intrigue me. To this day, I feel the same inexplicable envy and fascination seeing people out for their runs that I felt seeing my Dad go out to run or the woman from my neighborhood running down the street.

As a kid, observing these adults running struck something in me that I have trouble explaining. Whatever it was wasn’t strong, it took me many, many years before running would become a habit for me and something through which I define myself. However, it was lasting.

Daily Dozen
40 minutes recumbent bike @ lunch hour

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