Do people who run marathons know they don’t have to?
I understand this point of view. For us fanatics, marathon training and racing is a serious undertaking, but it lacks a serious purpose. It does not demand any of our time or energy, and yet we expend both profusely for the purposes of covering 26.2 miles with the power of our skinny legs two minutes faster than we did last time. We do not earn anything of significance, the response of our non-fanatic friends and family may be one of awe, but can also lean towards concern, we repeatedly suffer injuries in the process and even if we don’t, training hurts. On workout day, pain is always on the horizon – twice a week like clockwork. Excepting the occasional charity run or a fast finish in a ‘plant-powered athlete’ shirt, it does little for the greater good. What nonsense.
Yes, critics, I am well aware that I don’t have to put such efforts into something so seemingly pointless.
I choose to. And since you’re already here, I’ll tell you why.
Running is a rock in my day
When uncertainty dominated by personal life, my professional life, and everything in between, there is at least one thing I know for certain. I will run in the morning. This certainty does not even tremble in the face of sad thoughts, a manic episode, relationship drama, work stress worries about other peoples’ well-being or cynicism with the current state of affairs. I want you to pause and think of the power of this kind of ‘rock routine’. No matter how badly you f**cked up, no matter what has happened to you, no matter how you feel about that, you have a daily reset scheduled in that will expose you to sunlight, movement and time with yourself. This kind of routine doesn’t have to involve any pavement pounding or (d)treadmill work, but for me it plays a central role. To me, running is the warm cup of tea the dog is calmly sipping in the house on fire in the famous internet meme. Secondary rocks in my day include a cold shower post-run, listening to or playing music in the evening, nightly self-care and journaling. Granted, some of these rocks are more loose than others, and that’s okay. With practise they can become steadfast. I encourage you to choose your own rocks.
Running is singular focus
When you run hard, the intensity of the experience billows like a balloon in your mind, pushing everything else to the fringes. There is no room for worry, shame, sadness, happiness, or in fact any other thoughts or feelings that are superfluous to the objective of running hard. All there is room for is the exhilarating experience of extreme effort and the intentional tolerance of the pain that accompanies it such that you can move quickly forward. “Moving quickly forward” is the only purpose of your existence in this moment. Exhilaration and pain are the only feelings to exist. You can’t temper these feelings with screen-based distractions. You can’t even absorb music when you’re in this mental state, it’s like a voice far away you can’t quite hear. The only experience that has come close to this for me is physical intimacy with someone I love intensely. But it would be unusual to get that kick on a daily basis before 8AM.
Running is camaraderie
I recently ran the Pikes Peak marathon. The route is straight up the hill, and then straight down the way you came, so the people who are ahead of you run by on their descent and you run by the people behind you on your descent. We all get a “bib” with our number. name and post-race beer voucher on it. Other runners, strangers, will reliably tell you you’re looking strong and wish you well as you pass them, and I try to do the same. The fact that pronouncing my name is a challenge to those who are not familiar with it proved no barrier to this practise. My nameless friends and supports would glance at my bib, decide not to butcher my name, look at my face and say: “looking strong …. runner/girl”.
When you run with a team or a morning/lunch/brewery run group, you don’t even need to be friends with the people to feel an intense camaraderie with them at times. This is related to the paragraph above, in that when you experience the singular focus of hard running with others, it becomes your collective singular focus to all run fast together. I raced the Desert RATS marathon in Fruita, Colorado in 2022. Myself and three other women ran as a pack at the front for the first half. Few words were spoken. Eventually our unit came to a natural end, and Reese pulled away for a strong first place finish while I stumbled through the last 13 miles. Reese and I are friends now, and Hannah (another beast of an athlete in our unit who pulled away while I disintegrated) and I are friendly when we see each other at races. There was no sense, at least for me, of competitiveness in the time we ran together. Of course I like to perform well, or as Hannah said during the same race – “It’s fun to crush”, but that wasn’t my singular focus at the time. We were a pack, pushing each other wordlessly to stay focused and stay strong. Without expressing the intent, we took it in turns to lead the paceline, thereby taking on the burden of navigation and notifying the others of people and objects on the trail. We didn’t know each other, and yet for the time we ran feral together, we were close, or some version of it.
When I eventually finished that race, I was spurred to run hard to the finish line by another woman at my heels. The photographer caught two photos of us finishing, her just behind me. In the first, we are heaving much-needed oxygen into our lungs after the effort of the final sprint. In the second. we are hugging. I didn’t know that person’s name, I still don’t. But we were comrades in effort and pain. Runners, irrespective of pace, are comrades in effort and pain. We see this in the raise of a finger and the head nod to runners passing on the trail, in the breathless urge “come on, finish strong!” to teammates during a workout, in the fist-bumps and back-pats to fellow fanatics at races. I wish I could say that this camaraderie is practised between individuals irrespective of race, gender, sexuality, but unfortunately I don’t know that the running community has made it to full inclusivity yet. My wish for running is that everyone gets cheered on my strangers and a finish line hug if they want it and I will continue to run for this if for no other pretence of a higher purpose.
Running is a meritocracy
Running is the closest thing to merit-based achievement I have found in this life. I am under no illusions about most of my academic and career achievements. I know that I am intelligent and that I work hard but I also know that my achievements to date are a function of my race, my middle-class origins and the good fortune I have had to meet people who picked me out of a crowd and lifted me up, starting with my parents. It is true that a certain category of body is more conducive to running fast than others, but, excepting some of the more extreme disabilities, everyone who is sufficiently able can move forward, and will move forward faster the more time they put into practise. I have seen people without functioning legs cross the finish line at marathons on wheelchairs, fat people get their medal, and generally people of all abilities move faster with more effort. In a world that is governed by chance but all too often rewards people for being on the receiving end of good chance, this simple correlation between effort and running achievement is a comfort.
Running quenches your fear of discomfort, pain and death
If you’re still here reader, I’ll send you on your merry way with a dramatic finish. Graeme Obree, a.k.a. The Flying Scotsman, was a champion track cyclist in his time. In the documentary, Sir Chris Hoy: How to Win Gold, Graeme insists that when he raced, he was not afraid to die to win. When I am approximately 1km from the finish line of a race, or 100m from the end of the last interval in training, the same thought reliably comes to surface: “if I die from the effort of this, I’m okay with that”. And I am. Accepting that has allowed me to push past the pain barrier our brains insert to protect ourselves. I know the kind of pain you can push through and the kind you shouldn’t: muscle, lung – good pain; joint, tendon, bone – bad pain (shout out to my partner and friend, Sage, a non-fanatic runner who enlightened me with this clear distinction). More generally, I know that there is no discomfort or pain I cannot live through. Once you’ve run on broken bones (bad pain) with a chest on fire (good pain), you can feel confident of that much. You can feel confident that this is temporary, and that as soon as you stop incurring the pain on yourself (either by running or the myriad of self-harming practises we humans have developed), it will pass.
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