I’m a runner, albeit not always a happy one. Sometimes my miles are a slog. Usually they’re something for me to tick off my to-do list. In the back of my mind, I thought it odd that I didn’t look on running with the same joy that possessed me as a child. I chalked it up to my body changing from wiry childhood to lumpy adulthood. Lately, I’ve wondered if it has more to do with the reasons why I run now versus the reasons I used to run. As a child, I ran to have fun. As an adult, I run to stay in shape, a reason about as far away from fun as possible.
Through the dice toss that is Amazon.com’s “books you might like,” I discovered Born to Run by Chris McDougall. Besides the excellent writing, McDougall tells an amazing story about the Tarahumara, a tribe living in the wilds of Mexico’s Copper Canyon area. While the book weaves together several stories about ultra running and the Tarahumara, the underlying thesis is that humans are born to run, that our bodies can take pleasure from moving fast. Miles weren’t meant to be slogged through, but reveled in.
Prior to reading Born to Run, I’d read a few review that said, “I’ll be surprised if you don’t want to get up and run after reading this book.” Slightly skeptical, because I’ve believed forever that some people are “runners” and the rest of us aren’t. I started to read.
I finished the book this morning, and the reviews were right: I wanted to run to experience the same pleasure McDougall described. This book is a reminder that running needn’t be about namebrand apparel, corporate sponsorships, and fame. Running can be for the sheer pleasure of experiencing a finely built machine doing what it’s designed to do.
How many things in our lives fit this definition? How many things that we did for pleasure have turned into work? Think about how we eat.
We’ve gone from sitting down to a meal, perhaps with the accompanient of conversation, to eating fast food in our cars. We define this practice as “convenient,” but we’ve turned a pleasure into a task to check of the list.
Exercise of any sort is all too often slotted into categories of physicial appearance. We don’t play anymore, we cardio. We don’t laugh from breathlessness, we huff with boredom. What are we becoming?
What if, instead of advocating health care for everyone, we advocated healthy living for everyone? What if instead of passing a cap and trade program, we made it easier for people to do things in their community under their own steam?
While technology in its many shapes and sizes has helped make life amazing in many ways, I think we often overlook simple solutions in favor of the complicated. We need to examine the motivations that our driving our actions with more care. Too much of what we do happens on autopilot. Sometimes that’s all we can manage, but it shouldn’t become the driving force behind our lives.
As I try to change my perspective about running, and even the way I run, I still may wake up some mornings with little desire to step foot outside. However, I do know that running has become less about the mileage, the time, and the scale and more about how I feel while I’m doing it.
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