Duhr...

Running without a plan should be the plan. In life in general when you force rigid rules of who, what, where, when, why and how on to things you take the fun out of everything. The same can be said about running; when you complicate it you stray from the reasons that should be the driving force for why you run. Call it what you want; peace, harmony, an ordered soul, Zen, just for fun. Running itself should be the goal and the destination. Training plans do nothing but add clutter and distractions from the real joy of running. If you are not yet ready to run a certain distance you should not go sign up for a race of that distance, instead you should enjoy running until you happen to get physically capable of running that distance and then register for it.

Perhaps this is a very fine distinction, but a race should not be looked at as an opportunity to see if you can in fact do what you’ve been training for. But instead should be regarded as nothing more than a confirmation, a replication perhaps, of what you already knew you were capable of.

I was watching a documentary on youtube (actually I didn’t make it through more than fifteen minutes but apparently it’s quite good) called “The Spirit of the Marathon” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BRSw-B4-2E the movie says that it follows several runners of different abilities as they prepare and then run the Chicago marathon.
One person that they were following was an older man. Here is a quote from him “People ask me why I run marathons, I run it for the t-shirt . . . it’s my subtle way of saying I did something that most people can’t do”. This is wrong on so many levels. Running, sport, or any other activity is not something that should be done so that you can brag to other people. There is a reason the saying ‘humility is a virtue’ has stuck around. I pity the person that has run the amount of miles needed to prepare their body to the point that they are capable of running a marathon for no reason other than being a braggart. I can’t imagine how unhappy those runs must have been. Also, I really don’t like the notion that running a marathon is something that most people can’t do. Anybody can do it, it’s just that some people choose to other things with their time than running.

There are some better moments of the documentary though. There is a runner that has a particularly inspiring quote near the beginning about what finishing a marathon means. He says “when you cross that finish line, no matter how slow, no matter how fast, it will change your life forever”. Truer words have never been spoken. Being able to do run 42 kilometres is pretty amazing. Perhaps the reason that particular man was able to say something so nice was because he never won the prize of prizes in marathons, Boston, he only got second place. He never got the big bragging rights.

If people want to do a marathon that’s great and I respect the effort that they put in to complete it, however I just don’t understand why people would possibly want to start such a massive training program if the goal is achievement and not enjoyment.
Is it capitalism that taints our world so much that people turn to marathon running in an attempt to gain their piece of the pie? Capitalism, through its concept of the ‘American dream’, puts such a focus on being one of the “haves” in society and makes people feel worse if they fail to the point that they become one of the “have not’s”; and the gap between the rich and the poor in society keeps growing so we get more people becoming the “have not’s” which leads to people trying to find outlets to make them feel better about not getting to the top of the money pile. They failed at getting notoriety through money, which society tells them is the most important, so they turn to something else which seems to be running more often for people. Yes, it is super duper that they are running and exercising, but it is a meaningless pursuit if they are doing it for inharmonious reasons. Run for yourself; not to show off. Run because you enjoy it; not because you aren’t good enough at what you really wanted so you need something to lord over your friends with. Sure it’s a great accomplishment; but all you did was something that every single person in the world could do if they could be bothered to put in the training. Our bodies were designed to run.

Life should be about doing things you enjoy, not about receiving accolades. If your life is such that you need to turn stack up a pile of t-shirts to prove yourself then you need to rethink your value system. Maybe try some drugs to reacquaint yourself with your Zen or something.

“Something is done best when you do it with the reckless abandon of a child that hasn’t yet learned society’s limits of how it’s supposed to be done”

Keep on running

Nazzer