Often you will be subjected to a tangent my mind followed on
my morning run. This is one such
train of thought. How long did it take for me to think of myself as a
runner? Well let’s see. I frolicked, chased, and played at
running as a child. I would
venture to say most of us did, but I doubt we would use that experience alone
to classify ourselves as runners.
I ran while playing games on the playground; kickball, dodge ball, and
the like but that didn’t make me a runner. I even went out for the track team in high school, but
everyone was so much faster than me and I was more focused on academics, so I
quit. That certainly didn’t make
me a runner. About 4 years ago, I
was feeling stressed at work and was venting to my husband one afternoon. “Why don’t you go for a run around the
block?” he recommended. “What an
odd suggestion!” I thought. But for whatever reason it sounded good
to me and I went. I ran, but I was
not yet a runner.
At first, I found that returning to running as an adult was
much more difficult than it had been as a child. As a kid, you could not run for many weeks, then easily join
in a game of tag and not even be winded.
As a grown-up of 30 something, my reintroduction to running was much
more gradual. At first I would
walk swiftly to a track near my house, then I would jog the straight-aways of
the track, huffing and puffing, only to slow to a walk at the curves. Eventually I got so I could run a whole
lap without stopping, then several. After many weeks, I was running to the track, around it a few
times, then back home. I estimated
it was about a mile. But I still
didn’t call myself a runner.
Running was just something I did at least once a week, to blow off some
steam.
After the first spring of running laps, I found a few cool
summer morning to run each week and continued the trend in the fall and through
the winter. I was running 2-3
times a week. Still not a runner…
I found that when we traveled to Europe for the first time,
I couldn’t conceive of going the whole 50 days without running at all. I found locations where I could squeeze
in a run. Around the dirt roads
that traced the circumference of the farm we stayed on in Tuscany and by the
shore of the North Sea in Germany, I ran while on vacation. Was I a runner?
I became interested in other runners, how did they run, I
learned a bit about posture and technique. Could I actually be considered a runner?
When my husband and I traveled to Europe with my mom for her
6oth birthday last summer, I ran 3 miles through the countryside as they
lounged in the common room of the villa in Italy. I ran until a thunderstorm threatened. I found random paths around Lake
Lucerne and ran on trails to the shore.
I even ran through the cobbled streets of
Colmar, France.
I might have been on my way to becoming a runner…
I became fascinated with running gear. I have special shoes, socks, and shorts
that I put on before I go running.
I have the equipment, does that make me a runner?
I ran in my first race as an adult this past fall. I learned that I am not destined to be
a competitive runner. Not because
I had a poor time, in fact for me it was PR. I killed it on the uphill passing folks left and right, but
that wasn’t because I desired a certain place, it was because I saw a past
student of mine running with his dad and I wanted to catch up and say hello! After we shared a few words, due to my
peaceful demeanor I even slowed down, hoping they wouldn’t feel self conscious
or distracted with me right behind them.
As I approached the finish line, I could feel runners make the final
push, to pass just one more person or to get a few seconds closer to their
desired time. I moved to the side
and slowed to a jog as I heard a person wheezing and coughing behind me. Perhaps she had trained like hell for
this race and at the last minute came down with a cold. Or maybe she had quit smoking, and this
race was a step toward a healthier life.
I made up stories in my mind about why my fellow runners should have the
right of way. So racing might not
be for me, but does that make me less of a runner?
Even as I learned that racing probably wasn’t for me, I hit
another milestone. I ran with
another runner. (Sure I had run
with my husband before, mainly because I persuaded him to keep me company on a
few of my short European runs, but he certainly doesn’t consider himself a
runner). As I ran with my friend
Kaytee over winter break, I shared that I had only ever run a bit over 3 miles
at a time. I highly doubted that I
could run further than that in one session. As I kept pace with Kaytee, she assured me that I could run
a 10k. “If I can do it, you can,”
she encouraged. “Yeah, but she’s a
runner,” I thought doubtfully to myself.
But she was right, over the next few weeks I tried running 4 miles, then
5, then 6 and half. I didn’t have
any desire to run a race that long, but still I loved playing with these longer
distances. I was running between
10-15 miles a week. Was I finally
a runner?
So why was it so hard for me to admit I was a runner? I think it is in the semantics. If I say, I run. That is something I do. I do a lot of things from time to
time. Sometimes I do the dishes,
but I wouldn’t say I’m a dishwasher. I think when someone declares, “I am a runner.” We come to understand that they
identify that as an essential part of who they are. It doesn’t have anything to do with how fast you are, how
far you go, if you race, what you wear or even how often you do it. You may even have a love hate
relationship with running, as many of us do. When you transition from someone who runs, to being a
runner, it is a very personal and individual revelation. I cannot tell you the exact moment in
time when I came to think of myself as a runner. But being on the other side of this philosophical
question, does bring me
peace. Just because I didn’t run
for two days in a row, doesn’t change my identity. For runners who get injured or take a planned break from
running, their status is not revoked.
Once a runner, always a runner. For me, the freedom in my body and the focus of my
mind that I experience during a run, uplifts my soul in such a way that a time
and a space for growth and reflection is created. This is just another way that I like to “Live Peaceful.”
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