In praise of running

Running gives me everything.  Running gives me a supportive community of comrades who are both more competitive and more altruistic, as Christopher McDougall points out; maybe because we can viscerally connect with each other’s pain, pride and perseverance.  Running also gives me the chance to be alone, moving through the mist of ever-shifting thoughts and needs and grudges, grinding them down mile after mile into dust, leaving me clean.  

Running is my meditation, helping me check in and focus on each body part, the aching ankle, the wonky knee, the tight hamstring, the lazy glute, bringing me to empathy and gratitude for this miraculous body whose tissues and structure reflect my genetic inheritance, psychological makeup and everything else that has shaped me.  Running is elemental: each step grounds me, like Antaeus, in the replenishing energy of earth; each breath is a deep drink of air; I soak in the salt ocean of my sweat.  Running gives me a feel for the health of my lungs, my blood, my heart.  Each race I run is an objective gauge of my fitness, my level of energy, my excessive intake of muffins.  Running helps me stay truthful in a world where it is too easy to lie. (Which may be why so many runners reacted to Paul Ryan’s little fib about his marathon time; a harmless exaggeration to a non-runner, but a basic betrayal of the runner’s code, revealing so much about the politician’s unreality.)   

Because I run I get to fall for all these other gorgeous runners of every shape, size, age, race and gender, to like them and wish them well with all my being, even if it’s just through eye contact as we run past one another.  If I were ever paralyzed I would hope to make contact with others with the same heart-felt intensity.  Some people talk about running as a spiritual practice, but I can’t speak to that.

You can probably tell this was written after a great run.  Running gives me the summery shimmer of endorphins, thank goodness, on a cool wet fall day.