Other people’s words about … running
When I was lying in my hospital bed [with cancer], wondering if I wold ever be able to stand straight again, I decided that if I ever could, I would run. I don’t run marathons. I don’t want to run marathons. I trot round the park and then often stop for a cup of tea and a scone.
From ‘The Art of Not Falling Apart’
by Christina Patterson
There’s no doubt about it — running is a popular form of exercise these days. It seems to me that it hasn’t been this popular since the 1970s, back when it was called ‘jogging’, back before one of the men responsible for popularising it as a form of fitness, Jim Fixx, had died from a massive heart attack just after returning home from his daily run.
There’s no doubt that different runners run for different reasons, which is as it should be. Some people run primarily as a means to an end: to get fit and lose weight, whether or not they love or loathe running itself. Some people run compulsively, addictively, to a point that takes them beyond good health and fitness to something closer to ill health, both physical and mental. (On that topic, in particular, I found this article particularly interesting.) Some people run to challenge themselves; some people run to compete in races; some people run to find companionship; some people run to raise money for a cause they believe in.
And some of us run simply because it makes us feel good. And because we find, to our joy, that we can.
What I see when I run:
Boats
I found myself thinking about all of this recently because, for a brief moment, I thought I might enter a race, my first race. The race I was thinking of running in is the Mother’s Day Classic, a walk/run event in which walkers and runners raise money for breast cancer. I’ve done the walk with my mother for the last three years, and I’ve loved every moment of it: the time we spend together as we walk the course, the conversation we have, the knowledge that we’re raising money for an important cause. And, of course, the breakfast that we linger over together in a coffee shop afterwards, too!
But this year my mother will be overseas on Mother’s Day. I thought initially that I would participate in the walk, anyway, and think of her as I walked; and then I thought: well, why not do the run instead? Isn’t that what runners are supposed to do at some point in their running careers — run in a race?
The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I should do it … and the more, somehow, I put off entering. Every time I went online to register for the event, I felt an inexplicable sense of antipathy, an unsettling ambivalence, that I felt ashamed of but that I couldn’t seem to ignore. I wondered if this ambivalence came from worrying that I would be the slowest runner on the course (I am a slow runner). Or if it came from my slight, but not negligble, aversion to being hemmed in by a crowd. Or from my sense that I would look stupid. Or from my fear of being lonely, out there on the course alone, without my beloved mother, whose company (and whose companionship) I so love.
And it was around about then, when I was thinking about loneliness, when I was thinking about how much I would miss my mother on Mother’s Day, that I finally came back to thinking about why I run in the first place. I had been telling myself, each time I went online to register for the Mother’s Day Classic, that it would be a failure of courage if I didn’t enter, now that I’d thought of doing so; that if I didn’t, I was being a coward. That, by not being brave enough to do what other runners do, I would be giving into my fears.
But I have never run in order to learn how to become more courageous. Or to learn how to overcome loneliness. Or to learn how to cope with crowds. I have never run in order to do what other runners do or think as other runners think. Above all, I have never run because I feel I should. Quite the contrary, in fact. I run because I want to. I run because it feels good. I run because, many years ago, when I was a young, confused woman with an eating disorder and no strong sense of self, I didn’t allow myself to do the things that made me feel good — and I am not that woman anymore, that woman who couldn’t allow herself to do the things she loved. That’s why I run.
And deciding to run in a race — any race, even a lovely, community-minded fun run for a good cause, like the Mother’s Day Classic — which triggers all the things that make me second-guess myself and feel bad about myself would be a decision that is the antithesis of everything about the decision I made to run in the first place.
What I see when I run:
Avenue of sheoaks
So I have put away the registration form for the Mother’s Day Classic for this year. I will miss my mother, and I will miss walking with her, but I know that we will walk it again another year, together.
And in the meantime, I will keep running because, to my joy, I find that I can.
PS For anyone who’s interested, I am still going to raise money for cancer. I have registered instead for Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea, which means that on one morning in May or June I will be baking the kind of scones of which Christina Patterson, whom I quoted at the start of this post, would approve, and I will be sharing them over a cup of tea with friends instead of running. And I’m looking forward to that morning already …
What I see when I run:
Reflections
Lately I’ve been reading about …
Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been reading online lately:
- On trees and humans co-existing in urban areas: an elegy.
- A writer’s unabashed words about not being afraid to make piles of money.
- An actor’s story about aneurisms, recovery and the truth behind the scenes in the Game of Thrones.
twenty-one words 
I admire your clarity of thought and ability to pare down the inner conflict into digestible pieces. It is a gift to know oneself so well.
Possibly also a sign of self-absorption!!! But I hope sometimes in writing posts like this that other people who doubt themselves can see themselves reflected in my writing and feel less alone 🙂