What if we don't run for time? What if we don't run for distance? What if we just run? These are the questions I have been asking myself the last few weeks. Competition is one thing I understand, when you see fellow competitors and you start chasing, adrenaline kicks in and competitive instincts take over. Over the last year as I have been increasing my distances (even plagued with injuries and illnesses) I have been running longer distances outside of competitive races. On these runs I usually stop and eat or stretch or just take in the scenery along remote ridges on the trails. Instead of starting back up to better my time, I will start running again just to keep my muscles from cooling down too much.
Instead of training lately I have just been running. Not on a fixed schedule, just when life allows for it. I have been feeling better during and afterwards. My body has been healing quicker and with overall less "pain." There was a great quote I read recently in Ultra Marathoner Scott Jurek's book "Eat & Run" where Scott's running partner and pacer would say "Pain only hurts!" That is true in most cases and I have started to learn what pains only hurt and what pains mean something is wrong. It kind of amazes me that putting my body through "pain" has made me better understand my body and I think now my body understands me. There is a term used mostly by Rastafari I believe, overstanding, here the mind is unclouded and is clear to truly understand something.
I brought the question up to my wife yesterday "What if we just run?" and she replied "You can call it funning." I think I agree.
Running has evolved for me in ways I have never expected. I had never ran outside of football practice or gym class until I started training for a triathlon in 2009. I started with a couch-to-5k program and I thought that running would just be something I had to do to complete the triathlon. I had already been bicycle commuting to work and school for years, which was my strongest leg of the competition, but my run training was something I really enjoyed.
During my triathlon years, only a total of two, I was diagnosed as a pronator and started getting specialized shoes to help the condition. A friend of mine, now my running partner, recommended taking my shoes off and running. At first I told him he was crazy, but after a few weeks of the same nagging pains in my right knee and hip I gave it a shot. I went to a local high school track and took off my shoes. During the first few steps exactly what I thought was going to happen, happened. My heels came down heavy on the pavement and it hurt. Then something else happened, my feet started landing directly under my hips, my torso straightened upright and my tempo increased. Most of all that was noticeable, there was no knee or hip pain.
I started that same couch-to-5k program, but this time without shoes. I made the transition (as did a lot of other runners at the time, as the minimalist running movement was taking off) to minimalist running shoes. Running pain free made me even happier yet. I started running the six miles to work and back a couple of days a week and training for longer runs with this newly-found, to me, form.
So it has been a few years since then and it is not as though running has been pain or injury-free for me since, but it has brought me joys and happiness I had not foreseen. What's next in this evolution? Who knows, but I look forward to finding out.
