Running is dumb

To be clear, don’t run.

I started running.

I don’t’ know for how long I’ll do it. I’m definitely a fair-weather runner and probably not more than 5k.

For context, I’m 5’9” and fluctuate between 220 and 235lbs with the body composition of a fat crossfitter. I should not be running.

Given all of that, why is this my very first writing piece? Because the pain has made coalesced a lot of the philosophical ideas that I’ve collected over 30 years. (I started counting in grade 12 when I took the course, Theory of Knowledge.

Let’s start at the feet. They’re a tad wide. My first run (walk) started with electrical pain across the width of my left foot, under the ball “pad”.

Welcome to running.

After 10 minutes, which felt like 20, it was bearable.

Barely.

With any new endeavors new sensations can, initially, be interpreted as pain. Because it is. But you stick with it and you re-interpret. It’s the price of admission into this stupid activity. Six runs in and the feeling is all but gone……. from the focus of my attention. If I look for it, I find it.

I do a combination of running (or is it jogging?) and walking because I don’t hate myself that much.

While I only feel chaos inside and out, I am reassured that my body senses order because my nose and lungs have fallen into a meditative rhythm that feels like what mediation is expected to sound like. Even if I try to adopt a different rhythm, my body rejects my idea.

Assuming nothing. Trust the process in the beginning. You may need to unlearn old lessons

Aside: I’m also revisiting an old passion- drawing. My old schtick was reproduction of images instead of “seeing” the underlying angle/distance/shape/value. Anyway…..

When the running part starts, I need to conjure up the image of my chest up, stride long and foot strike on a cloud. It helps that my shoes have soles like pillows. Even with my transcendent breath work and angelic locomotion, my body reminds me of the main point of this essay: running is dumb. At this point, I am incapable of understanding it intellectually, so I am told in visceral terms: you have acid instead of blood and the lungs of a newborn.

The only thing I can do is find a landmark. A bus stop. A parked car. An intersection. Or my favorite, my house. I maintain my sanity by promising relief when I hit the landmark. Often, the run interval ends (with a beep on my phone) before I reach nirvana.

One time, a walk interval ended at the bottom of the final incline of the route. It’s also the steepest. At this point, I had a one-minute run interval. Incredibly, the line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If”, immediately popped into my head:

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run…..you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Let’s ignore all the emotions attached to “Man” and “my son”. “sixty seconds’…..run”. How perfect is that?! I always thought it was cool when someone could link a conversation or event to literary works; fictional, philosophical, historical or religious.

I’ve gone from being a victim of a corporeal assault to being rescued by my brain “right side”.

The very first run interval is a slight incline almost as if to say, “This is not a stroll, you’re here to work, so wake up!” (I usually run at 6am). Just like the first few reps of the first set of heavy lifting, the first run is awkward and harder than it should be. But you know this going in.

I didn’t grow up religious but do have a spiritual bent and, now, I’m thinking about God.

I see it as God telling me to go left, instead of right to start the loop, just so that I would hit this ramp sooner than later.

Another one of my run intervals ends 20 seconds AFTER I round a corner. God would not let me cop out and stop at the obvious spot. He wants me to go beyond any preconceived limitations and convince me that I’m capable of a bit more.

Remember the final incline? For the moment, it’s a walk. The run starts again at the top. It won’t always be this way because the timing of the interval changes. And God sees too much joy in my heart.

I’ll take it for now and run my best at the top. I’ve been going for about 25 minutes and just finished an uphill walk. I don’t have a full two-minute run in me. So, in His infinite mercy, He sees that I have put in the work and gives me a decline for the last 15-20 seconds. Thank you, Jesus! Incidentally, the landmark target is a traffic circle, but the “unforgiving minute” ends 10 meters before that. Divine intervention?

At the current interval split (4 walk, 2 run) my final interval is a run (“sprint to the finish line” anyone?) AND coincides with my front steps! Something cosmic is going on, right?

You’re as skeptical as me. It’s just physics. Time, distance, velocity. I’ll give you that.

What about the cool crosswind out of nowhere, just when the morning sun came up a bit high or early?

Or the tailwind when the weaker of my personalities lets me walk before the interval is up?

It could be a coincidence but there is no downside to assuming a divine cheerleader and meaningful upside.

I stagger through the door between 6:45 and 7. I can’t collapse for a few reasons:

1. 230lbs vs. tile always ends with tile winning and me being able to sense rain in my bones after that.
2. My wife and kids can’t see me weak and defeated! I’m trying to be Kipling’s Man.
3. I might just stay down there, which means my daughter will miss her bus and my business will fail, and my boys will rewrite our will.

So, I slump on the bench and peel off as much as possible without becoming indecent. My ego allows me the indulgence to imagine that my wife and kids see that it’s possible to endure voluntary hardship and survive. That age is not an excuse. That their dad was “toiling” while they slept.

It’s especially gratifying to know that when they see me sweaty and grimacing, I was right:

Running is dumb.

I was going to post the Chat-GPT edited version (it’s better) but was inspired (most recently) by the Joan Westenburg’s article on Cringe tolerance.