The Passion
What is it that separates those of us who love running?
I was complaining.
I was out on a chatty run with one of my favorite running friends. He was a decade or so younger than me. He was a quiet, strong and peaceful friend who put up with my prattling away and enjoyed pounding the trails.
He trained for Boston with me one spring, sharing in my springtime rituals. From the New Year’s Day plunge in the Atlantic through the Boston Beast itself. He got to hear all the old tails and all my crackpot theories on running and life.
I had started podcasting by this time, setting free my running vibes out into the ether. I had intended to bring the tribal knowledge I had picked up along my routes to the new runners. Help some people and share the small lessons I had learned from the ‘real’ runners I had intersected with.
I was complaining that people were treated me like some sort of crazy person for running the way I do. Some sort of running savant. I was complaining that I was trying to connect and share with them on a common ground level and they were treating me like a “real’ runner.
You see, in my mind I was a mid-pack hack who never won anything. My heroes were the real runners of the 1970’s that I stood in awe of. The real runners were Bill Rodgers, Amby Burfoot, and that generation of runners. They ran in cutoff shorts and logged 120 mile weeks on Raman Noodles and flat Coke. I was a full 2 minutes per mile slower than them – an hour behind them at the marathon finish on my best day.
I complained loudly that people were mistaking me for someone else, someone I was not. You can scan the starting line of any distance race in Massachusetts and find the real runners. We breed them from the blue collar streets of Lawrence and Haverhill and Somerville. Lean, crazy and happy folks who love to run.
That wasn’t me. I was a middle-of-the-pack, suit and tie, prep school fakir. Old, overweight, amateur and slow.
Is it a universal truth that we never see ourselves as others see us? When we look in the mirror we see our faults, we see or failing and we see our tattered edges.
That day, he brought me up short with a matter-of-fact statement. “You’re a good runner. And you ARE pretty fast.”
That was an epiphany for me. To be at this point in my life and understand that when I look in the mirror I can see smiling man glowing with passion for life. I realize now that my gift, (and it is a gift), my gift for running is not my ability to do it but my passion for it.
Passion may not be the right word. It’s difficult to explain. I’m still figuring it out. I don’t lie awake at night feverish in anticipation of the next run. It’s not a physical passion. It’s a sense of peace, a sense of calm power that fills me as Buddy and I glide down the trails. Some days it is hard but it is never difficult.
The farther I go the more peaceful it becomes. The exhaustion of efforts centers me and I feel joy. Really, there is no other way to explain it. It’s a total body happiness where the physical and mental come together in a beautiful act of exhaustion. I can remember laughing out loud and shouting with glee at the 30 mile mark of an ultra. You’ll often find me singing to myself when you pass me in a long race.
This is the gift I want to give to you. It is a gift that I have been given over 3 decades of training and running in the mid-pack. Don’t go into running to lose weight or to get in shape. Don’t train for a marathon or a 10k. Train for a life time. Train your mind and your body as one and the same thing. Don’t worry about how fast you are going – listen to your body and hear what it is saying.
Make a 10 year plan. Make a 30 year plan. Become a student of your mind and your body. Treat each 10k in the woods with the dog as a lecture in running joy. I’ve been doing it for years and I never knew. I am truly an idiot savant. I never realized that like so many things in my life running had come easily to me and more importantly that joy of running came easily as well.
You have to stop trying to find the passion and let it find you. This is my gift – which I never knew I had. I thought everyone had this joy and passion. I always told people if running seems hard, you’re doing it wrong. Don’t worry about your stride or your shoes or the power-gels you eat. Focus on finding the joy. The joy is the lowest common denominator and once you find it the rest is a matter of course.
Search for the joy. Work for the joy. When you have the joy you will not be able to hold back the speed and the miles. They will sprout though you like a seed from the earth.
Don’t start running. Start living through running.
In the cooling shade of a cedar thicket the trail bends through a 200 year-old stone wall. My shirt is soaked with warm sweat. The downhill stretches and relaxes my stride. My footfalls are soft and strong as my feet search out the trail surface. My hands are loose and high. A water bottle is loosely gripped in the left and a grimy orange dog leash in the right. Buddy trots ahead tongue lolling and head low like a wild dog.
My shoes grip into the pine needles on the corner and the momentum slings me out into the trail.
I fly. I smile.