Back in April of 2010, I was on a run. I was running with a new group of people that had recently synced up with the Be Change Movement. As the group scattered and spread out along the trail, a couple of us began to talk. I was slow, still recovering only days after the American River 50.
While jaunting down the trail, heartrate controlled, I was asked "Why do I run?" I could have stopped to explain. I should of stopped to explain. Instead, I started rambling. I must have bored the listener. But I talked through a seried of long diatribes in my head before I murmured a few short burst of explanations.
For you, I can recall and recount my two most basic answers.
1) I RUN FOR MY HEAD'S HEALTH
Deep withing my mind is a series of holes. Like potholes in a paved highway, my mind is filled with divots of derailed moments of pain and problem. We all have them. When not running, I move to slow through my mind. Running allows me to move past the potholes faster because running allows me the solitude to escape for a brief moment. When I am jaunting down a trail leaping over near dormant winter streams, or skipping over exposed tree roots, I liken it to skipping over the pain of my past.
I know, insert the counselor's voice here, "Oh Jason, just move past that. We all have pain." I am not sure I asked for a response.
I am trying.
Running helps me find a way. Running brings a peace to the moment. Running cripples the negative and destructive energy that is produced by the dialog or a momentary and internal rage. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I live optimistically, hope-filled, and with a mind of strength and honor. But that 1% sliver of emotional baggage must be unpacked as to not destroy the other 99%. I didn't ask for the content of the baggage. In fact, I hate it. But if I am real, I cannot just place a veneer over it. I will open it. I will pull every article out and inspect the soiled linens down the last stitch of every seam that holds it together.
When I am in a rare moment like this, the arm-chair quarterbacks will send me a ton of messages via every possible angle of communication. Yet few have the audacity to do so on the counseling couch of a five hour run. Its easy to counsel at Starbucks. But the dirt trail is my physcian and exhaustion from total exertion is the prescription.
Perhaps, when you are at 160 BPM for the third hour, I will open up to you if you want to offer your 2 cents. I am not looking for anyone to interupt my solitude through a facebook comment of "what I need to do" or "what scripture I need to read." Oddly, I am most happy running in the early morning darkness trying to tangle myself in the triumph of tomorrow.
Perhaps this is my quest for an off switch. Somehow turn off the memory of what I want to forget. And off switch of what lies within.
When I am not running, this is what I hear, see, feel.
That's why I run...as Johnny finished his song's lyric... "To try to find a way."
Until then, why do you run? Don't comment. Just reflect.
JAS
Tomorrow, the second reason I run.
