As I sit and think about this, I realize something.... I genuinely have no idea why I run. I started in Jr High when my geography teacher bribed my class to participate in a 5k for extra credit. He said he'd like to see me out for XC the next year, and I did it. Stuck with it through high school, even though it was a HUGE source of competitive frustration for me. Post-HS is when the question of, "Why?" starts looming large. My post-HS career has been.... well, it's been pretty shit-tastic. It was just kind of there the first year and a half before I really started pushing forward early 2009. I promptly injured myself after 2 months, and my running somehow went downhill from there.
Between 2009 and 2013, I would regularly start running again, and I would always stop running eventually. Sometimes it went a little better than others. Sometimes I'd get a month in before deciding I wasn't having fun anymore. Sometimes I'd only make it a day or two before calling it quits.Why I quit always varied too. There were times where I was just being lazy and just stopped without really thinking about it. There were other times where I didn't enjoy myself and used that as justification to stop. And there were times where it was "fear" of injury- something would be hurting in a way that I wouldn't expect it too, and I would quit due to not wanting to badly hurt myself again. The length of my running sabaticals always varied too... sometimes I'd have a week or two off, other times I would take months at a time off.
Quitting was always a certainty, but I always came back to running. And I've never known why. Do I feel some strange obligation to keep trying to run? Is it because it's the only thing I know? Is it because it's something I can do on my own and don't need to rely on other people to show up and do it with me? Is there something else behind it? There has to be some sort of desire there... the fact that I keep coming back and I'm always looking for new adventures seems to indicate that, at some level, there is a want to run. I can only assume that this means I want to be doing it on some level. Part of me wishes I knew why I ran. Part of me thinks that it doesn't matter. All I know for sure is that if you were to ask me the question, I'd give you a dumb-founded look and shrug my shoulders. I run... why I run is anybody's guess, but I do it.
This kind of leads into my second subject. I've recently come up with my next bad idea. I worked the Desert RATS stage race last year and had a fantastic time. Unfortunately, I'm having to miss it this year because Bighorn is the final weekend of the race. During a real mental low-spot in my training recently, I expressed the thought that I would almost rather be working RATS than running my own race. In the weeks that followed, the idea started creeping in that maybe I wanted to actually PARTICIPATE in RATS next year. With this idea fresh in my head, I jumped on Facebook and asked my RATS friends advice on how to prepare for an event like that. One thing that popped up a couple times was the idea that you gotta love running and you gotta love what you're doing.
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| Maybe I'll get to be one of these crazies next year? |
This ties into my previous thoughts on not knowing why exactly I run. When I think about it, I know that I love aspects of running. I love being out on the trails. I love going on new adventures. I love the people I meet. But I hate other parts of it. I hate what is essentially the bread and butter runs (or maybe just my filler runs, depending on how you look at it)... I hate running in town. I hate being on the roads or on the Greenway or running circles around our little parks. Because the nearest trails are 30+ minute drives away, it is not feasible to go out there daily. And with winter in Wyoming lasting twelve and a half months of the year, trail running isn't an option for a good chunk of the year unless you're game for some major drift-busting. Nothing made me less happy than having to run my 12 mile long run and 8 mile middle-long run in town this week because a traditional May storm hammered our corner of the world. And I hate the weather. I will never run on a treadmill because I find it even more boring and painful than running around town. I take pride in going out in any weather condition, but it wears on you. I didn't mind it early on, but I'm finding right now that I REALLY HATE the wind and the snow.
Anyways... started wandering off-topic a bit. I love some big aspects of running, but hate other parts of it. With the emphasis that some folks put on loving what you're doing, I can't help but wonder if I love it enough. If I thought training for my first 50k/marathon was tough, I can only imagine what training for RATS will be like. There will be a lot more running in town. In the months leading up to the event, there will be lots of runs in shitty weather. I may not even be able start getting trail runs in until less than two months before the race. And I have to wonder... do I love the trails and the adventures and the people enough to get me through the not-fun parts? Will the parts I love be enough to keep me jogging around town and battling the elements to get my miles in for the day?
Over the next year, I think I'll find out where my heart lies. Maybe I'll find out whether or not I love running enough to accomplish the things I want to accomplish. Maybe, somewhere along the way, I'll find the answer to why I run (and hopefully it will be a more useful answer than "42".). In the meantime, I am a hair over one month away from my first 50K with the Bighorn 50K and I am 4 months away from my first marathon (because the maths are hard) with the Beat the Blerch. The train (and training) moves forward, and hopefully there will be some enlightenment along the way.
