The agony without the ecstasy

When I was a freshman in high school in New York City, I ran track and cross-country.  I thought I was pretty good.  After all, I won a bronze metal for being on a half-mile relay.  (But I might have been the slowest runner on the relay team.)

At the end of the season the coach said to me, “Gerry, you ought to try something else.”

I was crushed, and stopped running for five years.

But when I got to college and as a junior noticed that I was really out of shape, I started running on the tiny indoor track across the street from my fraternity house.  I ran for twenty minutes three times a week.  I hated it, dreaded it each time, and was thrilled to get done.  But I kept at it because I wanted to get into shape.

The next year it was tolerable.  No longer painful, but not a thrill either.  It kept me in shape, I ran maybe a half-hour each time, but it was not fun.  Just necessary work.

The following year something changed.  I started to enjoy it.  It was being out in the fresh air and going where I wanted.  I got to think and pray.  If I ran 40 minutes or more, I felt a runner’s high.  Now I know that was from the endorphins kicking in.  It was often hard to force myself to run, but once I got started I nearly always enjoyed it.

That was forty years ago.  I am still at it, running four days a week.  Generally I get great joy from it.  But don’t get the wrong idea.  I am very slow now, doing a ten-minute mile on my good days.  Most runners, if I am on a  running trail here in Birmingham, pass me up.  But I don’t care.  I just love being out there, sweating, getting my body working.  I pray and praise and give thanks.  No CDs in the ears, thank you.  The sounds of nature and people and even traffic–and God!–are enough for me.

Now I will get to my point.  (I know, you’re wondering why it has taken me so long!)  So often I see other runners with grimaces on their faces.  Do you remember the biography of Michelangelo The Agony and the Ecstasy?  Too many runners have the agony without the ecstasy.

I wonder why they run.  Is it to lose weight?  To get ready for a race?  To fulfill a promise to a friend or loved one?  To themselves?

All of those are good goals.  But some of them are trying too hard.  They think they must go a certain distance or certain speed.  Or they don’t realize that it will take a year or more (as it did for me) to begin to enjoy it.

In any event, I wish I could tell them, “Slow down, or do something to learn to enjoy running.  Because if you don’t learn that, you’ll never stick with it.”

There was a book in the 1970s titled The Joy of Running.  I have found, like millions of others, that there is joy in running.  But only if you persevere through the first year or more when it’s painful, and only if you try to enjoy it, rather than trying to break a record.