Some thoughts on running

So I'm running again. I am not a fitness jogger, I realized. While I don't like to be unfit, I also can't quite bring myself to reduce a competitive sport down to a plodding after-work pursuit.

I will run to race, I realized. Or because my friends are running with me. Shorn of running friends, I motivate myself with weekly 5k jaunts on the waterfront.

Running is enjoyable by itself. There's the thrill of remembered excitement as thoughts of zipping through balmy summer nights or arriving at the final back-straight of a race shiver down my spine. On an unexpectedly humid Saturday, beginning a five-mile run brought back times when I'd head out to run bearded and shirtless, with a Medic-Alert dogtag jingling behind me. I run next to memories these days, and at times my pace creeps faster to keep time with them. Speed-play.

Racing, by contrast, is zen. It's the only way I know to spend five minutes to an hour thinking of nothing but what I'm doing. Life lasts from the gun to the finish-line, and all of my thoughts in between are spent monitoring pace, injecting surges, instructing me to sit back and wait for the moment. My thoughts wander freely while running; they never waver an inch while racing. Forget the thrill of competition; forget the frisson of anticipation I feel every time I see the gun go up; forget the malicious urge to taunt my opponents as I pass them. I'd race solely for this feeling of total concentration.

I realized the other day that I hadn't been outkicked in - how long? Almost two years now. I mean, I've been beaten in races, but I can hardly think of the last time that I was beaten in the final sprint. (Ah - yes! It was Matt Simonson, but key parts of my anatomy were painfully frozen and bleeding at the time so I think that I can get a pass on that one.) This must have something to do with the zen business - or it might have something to do with the fact that I've settled on a tactic of negative splits. This tends to ensure that I spend the first third to half of every race hardly breathing hard, and the last half passing the dead and dying.

Beer tastes better after getting back from a run. It's all cool and fresh-tasting; it tastes like bodily health and manly virtue; it's practically a completely different beverage. The beer alone is a reason to run again. Fortunately, I've got others as well.