As some of you may know and attest to, I have never been the runner type. Shocking as it might be, the ginger who would regularly huddle in the kitchen corner and eat peanut butter straight from the jar, grew up never liking to run long distances. Running for the sake of running never made sense to me growing up. Running to serve a purpose made sense to me. Be it sports, a game of tag, or survival mode get the fuck away from your older brother. If avoiding a pummeling from older brothers was a Olympic sport, I would've had a solid chance to make the national team.
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| Evidence A- Judging by the photo I better start running to avoid that pummeling |
Until late high school or even college, running was a chore, something that required mental agony or preparation Although my childhood efforts to achieve diabetes from candy and countless jars of peanut butter failed, my body definitely knew that running for running's sake was not going to be a fun or easy activity for me, no matter how hard I tried. I remember the gym classes, the dreaded day of elementary school gym running around cones in a field, my first timed run (big deal, I think it was something like 400 or 800 meters, which is incredibly far for my 4th grade self), the presidential fitness mile around the track in middle school. Mercifully, the high school track was destroyed for renovation purposes a few months into my freshman year, never to be completed until well after my graduation (4 years mind you, no getting held back for me, suck it!). The mere thought of running against a clock, let alone competing against your peer group, would in my mind would transform a timed mile into my own personal marathon. Trying to impress your friends or maybe someone from the opposite gender is kinda hard as your preteen body struggles to hold in vomit after completing a thrilling 13 minute mile.
The biggest shock came when I showed up for soccer tryouts freshmen year to find out you had to run 2 miles, not just 1, in under 14 minutes (feel free to correct me if that time is off, the trauma may have altered my memory), not that I ever thought of making varsity that year. Suddenly, running became a desired skill. Eventually I adapted, made the varsity soccer team a few years later (gaining promotion junior year and then barely making the timed run my senior year) and dreading the occasional team run around town.
Cross-country and track all embraced being able to run far, not surprisingly I avoided those teams. Yet I went one step further to battle against the evil of long distance running, as I harbored members of the track team at my house while they were supposed to be out on a multiple mile quest to hone their skills for upcoming competitions against other high schools. I classified people who ran track by their reasoning behind joining; some people did track because they enjoyed it or actually good at it, I think most did it to stay in shape for other sports or for fitness, and some, I suspect, were coerced by parents for those bonus extracurriculars or to keep them from playing video games or getting in trouble. Either way, at that age I wasn't having it, I found better things to do, like build bike jumps with Walter or watch Cookie suffer multiple concussions getting jacked up playing backyard football against my brother's older, faster, and larger friends.
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| Sedentary bear at your local zoo |
Yet the post-childhood relationship with running has evolved. Staying in shape became a thing, not just something grownups do. Newsflash, when you get older, more often than not you don't stay the same shape acting like the sedentary bear at your local zoo. In college, to avoid the over crowded gym, Wake Forest had a nice trail network that was fun way of pretend that the afternoon jog was actually an exploration trek in the forest. The weather down south made me want to actually be outside for a significant portion of the year. A few miles here, a few miles there, this isn't so bad, so much that I really didn't do the gym all that much. I was alright with running, and running was alright with me as long as I didn't get cocky and try to become a track star. I wasn't going to win any races or be the fittest guy around, but I could run a few miles and not feel like dying, a win in my book.
Then back to Massachusetts after college. Half the year its cold and awful weather to be running around in outside. I don't want to get into my non-relationship with treadmills (aka they're stupid!), so I was stuck with the task of adapting my weak lungs to the cold New England air. I've done my best with running in Boston; I have the cold weather outfits, I know where to run and how not to get hit by cars when its dark or avoid uneven brick sidewalks, and when to not even try to run (definitely saw a wicked tough guy out running in the middle of Hurricane Sandy, that's commitment/stop it!). I got running shoes for my birthday last year (how pissed would my 8 year old self be if that's what he got?). I even have started to relax and zen-out while running these days, occasionally fantasizing about throwing a hip check to send a biker or tourist meandering down the middle of the sidewalk on the Mass Ave. Bridge into the Charles River, which would be totally defensible because I'm pretty sure that's a Masshole law. I've even run Harpoon's 5 Miler each May for the past couple years, and while I really run for the beer and a good time, I can say I've entered a race and not embarrassed myself.
So in the beginning I hated running, then moved to grudgingly accepted it as a means to what I want accomplish, then learned to accept it as an outlet and recess from life (and will probably move full circle into hating it again once I get those diabetes in future and start eating jars of peanut butter again). My eight year old self would probably think I am idiot for running for the sake of running, and part of me agrees with him, but I think he's silly for eating a whole jar of peanut butter and not thinking that anyone would notice. But seriously eight year old me, if you run a handful of miles a week, you're really just training to run away from bears, and they WILL take your peanut butter unless you can run...
