Why Run?

This is a question I get asked on occasion.  People want to know what some folks in general, and myself in particular, find so appealing about...well, going out and running from nowhere to nothing.  What's so much fun about going outside and sweating and getting red-faced and breathing like a surfacing hippopotamus?  And my rejoinder would be, "Why, any number of reasons."  I am not what you (or anyone else, for that matter) would call 'svelte'.  For many years, this was not an issue for me; all through college, despite spending a couple years competing halfheartedly on the tennis team, my fitness regimen consisted primarily of playing football on the lawn outside the dorm, eating a bunch, drinking heavily, and the occasional game of Indoor Ricochet Death Baseball played with my roommate.  And this served me well; I was reasonably happy and didn't feel as though death were imminent.  It was enough.

Then I started getting older.

And I got married, and had children.  I wasn't just living for myself anymore.  My health insurance premiums depended upon a yearly Health Assessment and completing a certain number of activities each year.  Don't get me wrong, I haven't turned into Steve Prefontaine or anything.  For one thing, I am overweight.  They tell me this every year at my Health Assessment.  My BMI falls into the overweight range, never mind the fact that my 'ideal weight' is so low as to be laughable and, in fact, is a weight I haven't seen since ninth grade.  The nurses who administer the tests are normally very solicitous.  They say things like, "Well, you look healthy to me.  Besides, the BMI test doesn't take build into account."  Apparently, if your bodily shape resembles nothing quite so much as a garden shed, your results may be a bit misleading.  Even so, this is cold comfort.  This is akin to telling one of the girls on those shows about the high school kids that get pregnant, "Well, Emillee, you're no doubt an inveterate whore, and have for all intents and purposes ruined your life, but I'll bet you have a cute baby."

Aside from keeping fat at bay, which is a much more realistic workout goal than most of the DVDs one sees today, such as Banish Your Fat, Slim Down in Thirty-nine Seconds a Day, and my personal favorite, Tell Your Fat to Go Fuck Itself, one of the most enjoyable things about running outside is the variety.  Routes are, truly, almost without end.  You can run for six months and never do the same route twice, unless you want to.

And how can one write about running without mentioning the races themselves?  What's not to love?  I mean, I pay the organizers $25 and in return I get a t-shirt, most likely a tech tee, maybe a pair of socks, and a goody bag with Clif bars, Gu, and all sorts of cool stuff.  And I get all this stuff even if I don't win.  In some cases, even if I don't finish!  Big races even have expos, where I can go hang with other runners, learn about nutrition, try on the latest gear, etc.  And the spectators!  Nowhere on earth, outside of perhaps some youth soccer leagues and the Special Olympics, are you more likely to encounter strangers who are willing to give you the fullness of their approbation. You run by, and they applaud as though you've just completed an especially tricky piece of Shostakovich, or performed open-heart surgery in a crowded restaurant, when all you've done is managed to slog along for six miles.  It's awesome, and you're statistically much less likely to be hugged by an exuberant seven-year-old, or a childlike adult with serious boundary issues.