20th Runniversary

This fall marks the 20^th year I have been a runner.  I hung around after the first day of my sophomore year of high school to join the cross-country team, and in doing so I met two of the bigger influences on my young life: head coach Rick Bishop and a 16 year-old junior named Kevin Salverson.  Initially, I was not a competent runner, barely performing well enough to be junior varsity.  But I fell in love with the sport and the people I met because of it and so I did what seemed logical; I kept running. 

Running has, at times, been the most important thing in my life.  It has provided me an escape and a refuge from the difficulties I faced.  It gave me the space to mull over most of the important decisions I have made.  It has also gutted me, left me empty, broken, disappointed, and frustrated.  I’ve experienced highs and lows, joy and woe, life and death.  Tragedy and pain, success and happiness; I found it all out on a run.

I have sought running as a coping mechanism.  It provided solace.  It mended broken hearts.  It gives me the truest form of freedom I have ever known.  It has helped me deal with what I now recognize as depression and anxiety, providing me with a natural form of medication and therapy for both.  I have struggled with the competitiveness of it, with accepting my abilities and limitations, losing my patience and temper when reality failed to meet expectations.  At times the only thing that mattered was running fast and winning races.  Age and experience have fostered an appreciation that what truly matters is the run itself.  I have been gifted with the ability to do it.  After 20 years and approximately 30,000 miles, that is more than enough. 

Running keeps me grounded, humbled, satisfied, creative, and inspired.  Over the years it has taught me to be present, in the moment, conscientious of the immediate world around me.  One can only take what the run provides, and when that is acknowledged and accepted, running can be a truly meditative act that fulfills the soul.

It also keeps me connected to Kevin, that kid I met long ago in the commons of Central High.  I have felt his presence, in some form or fashion, on every run over the last 17 years.  That is perhaps the thing for which I am most grateful.  Running keeps me connected to him and the friendship, brotherhood, and youth we shared all those years ago, running around the high plains of southeastern Wyoming.

I once asked Rick Bishop about his coaching philosophy.  With no hesitation, he declared that he was less interested in developing state champion runners and more interested in developing lifelong runners.  Rick’s love of running was infectious, and I have never forgotten that conversation.

You certainly succeeded with this kid, Bish.  It doesn’t have to be long and it doesn’t have to be fast.  It can just simply be.  As long as I am able to do so, I will run.  Until the wheels fall off…

1999 Wyoming State High School XC Championships

Woody Greeno Invite, University of Nebraska, 2005

2007 Silent Trails

2009 Twin Mountain Trudge

2011 Wind River Crossing

2012 Silent Trails

2013 Quad Rock

2014 Lake Lowell Half-Marathon

Observation Peak, Sawtooth Range, 2015

2017 Race to Robie Creek

Why Running? Simplicity.

As mentioned in my previous post, the list of necessary items for running is short.  The simplicity of that brevity is one of my favorite things about running.  It takes a body and mind willing to do it, and that's about it.  

I have dabbled in and enjoyed other sports.  I grew up on a basketball court.  I raced bikes, both road and mountain.  I rock climb, raft, ski, and backpack.  None of them mean to me what running does.  And part of that is complication versus simplicity.

All those other sports require some sort of gear, or a ball, or a team.  Gear can be cost-prohibitive, cumbersome, and potentially fail with varying degrees of calamity.  Ball sports require a suspension of disbelief.  It takes a group of people to agree that for whatever the duration of the game, the inflatable ball is the most important thing in the universe.  When one stops to really consider that, it's borderline whimsical.  

Running is cut and dried.  It requires no gear, tools, mechanization, or rule books.  It is historic.  It is rooted in biological evolution.  We can now leisurely do something that was once selected for by the environmental pressures placed upon our ancestors.  Running was once the very thing that kept us alive.  That's about as simple as it gets.

Unburden Your Running

Things one needs to run:

1.  Gumption

2.  Shoes (optional)

3.  Watch (optional)

4.  Shorts (optional, though strongly recommended and often legally required)

5.  If you're an old, balding, pasty man like me, a hat can sure be useful.

Things one DOES NOT need to run:

1. Literally anything and everything else.

Leave it at home.

Running for running's sake.

I haven't spent much of the last three years focused on running or racing.  Work obligations and travel have been the primary excuse, but laziness, apathy, and advancing old age have all played a part.  As I settle firmly into my mid-thirties, I find my desire to race, and the competitive spirit that always fed that desire, waning as the years go by.  It becomes harder and harder to get into that head space.  I have finally come to accept that.

Lately, I am running more.  I'm back to doing it for the pure fun of it.  It feels like the closest I've felt to the 15-year-old me who first started running 20 years ago.  That kid got his ass kicked by it and made the decision that underneath it all, it made him feel alive.  Two decades later, after wandering, searching, being lost, I feel like I have finally come back to the beginning.  Running just makes sense.  It's the only thing that ever has.

I do still have some goals.  I do still want to challenge myself.  But I don't want to lose myself or the purpose behind this in those challenges.  It is important to push the limits, try new things, be uncomfortable.  That is how we learn.  The point is to not get so caught up in the challenges that it festers as self-pity and self-doubt.

Slowly, piece-by-piece, I am attempting to rebuild myself, mentally and physically.  No longer will I compare what I am doing now, what I am capable of now, to my younger and faster self.  He had his time.  I value the present, being in the moment, more than I ever have.  I feel most in the moment when I am on the trail, clipping off an honest pace, and appreciating the act.  The rocks, the soil, the flora, the hills, the clouds, the sun, the one-foot-in-front-of-the- other of it is the essence.  I hope to do this the rest of my life.

Until the wheels fall off.