I have talked and written about my love of, passion for and obsession with running many times. For me running falls into that category of things we just can't stop gushing about and want everyone to experience. The evolution of the primate to current form of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a combination of many many factors through millennia of evolution. One of those evolutionary aspects is the primary use of our hind, our legs/glutes/trunk as stabilizers and primary method of motion. We may not be as fast as some animals or as powerful but overall the ability to use our legs the way we do has been key to our survival.
Human Beings are creatures that are born to run. The act of running has been key to our survival. Once as babies we learn to walk we waste no time in trying to run, waddling forth faster and faster until we are bounding across stairs, hallways, houses and shopping malls. Being bipedal is a beautiful function of our species, one we often take for granted and one with the ubiquitousness of office, television and couch culture has seemingly eroded our passion and ability to use our own motion to propel ourselves.
But start running, go for daily walks of 20 minutes or more and things come back to you. It is hard at first, there is no escaping the fact. But once you begin to catch a rhythm and begin practicing and running, it is so very pretty as to how you body begins to respond. You start hearing your thoughts better, you learn more about breathing by virtue of having no choice but to learn how to breathe properly. You start relying on yourself more and more, each small or grand achievement in the course of your running life boosts your confidence. You learn how to deal with bad days better by shedding stress by running or by learning that even a bad run, one that was horrible, slow, plodding and just sucked was still better than not having the run at all. Running teaches you that through difficulty our selves have the ability to overcome and exceed. Your body starts to release endorphins and dopamine naturally through the simple chemical processes of sweat and exertion. Running makes us better, it asks us to persevere when conditions are tough, it challenges us daily to better. Running is sport where you are always competing against your greatest enemy, yourself. We are own own worst critics and doomsayers, running forces us to confront this. We know not every run will be perfect but we run anyways and we quiet that nagging voice down another notch. You are always running against yourself, physically and spiritually. Physically it is about time, pace, distance, speed. Tangible and measurable benchmarks that when we achieve them feel just insanely good. Spiritually it is a race against everything that little voice tells you that you are. It is against the desire to stop and give up, to quit entirely. It is against those first flows of thoughts that come in which tell you all that is wrong in the world with all around you. But by running you start a new conversation, you push those ideas aside with each stride, each breath, each bead of hard earned sweat.
My favourite aspects of running though are these. Outdoor running. Nothing like it, in the pouring rain (yes very strange), July humidity, -20 windchill with ice on the ground and 4:30pm dark skies. The chance to be outside, to brave any element and run alongside mother nature is poetry itself. When you run outside you see your neighbourhood and community differently, you learn new streets and shortcuts, you smell the food of evenings, the days ends or beginnings on the faces of people you pass. You feel the city in your skin and take it with you each step you hit the ground with.
Related to that is the inherent madness in being outside. Running is as I've mentioned an obsession, an addiction. Ask my wife. If I don't get in a run, the energy I don't burn off comes out in an unproductive form of craziness or laziness, not good for anyone! Even running in the dead of a winter evening, the chill stinging the tips of my fingers through two layers of gloves is seen as crazy, tellement fou. But it is a special type of crazy, a grinning joyful foolishness I wouldn't trade. Running keeps me in touch with my madness, my crazy side, it outlets that energy positively. Let's be honest, we are all crazy. The pressures of life and the pressures of our selves upon our own selves can be nasty at times. We all have craziness in us. We all feel the pull of insanity at times. Being able to harness, use and go dancing with your madness however is something we are never really told to do but is something we should all aspire to. There is nothing wrong with being a little off, life itself is often a little off. Absurdity is the main ingredient of life and being able to come to terms with, to run towards it and embrace it is wondrous.
And that is why I love running most of all. Not just because it makes me better in almost all aspects of my life, but because it allows me to be more of myself than anything else. It allows me to be crazy and being crazy is just so much fun.
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