To all the recreational runners, or hobby joggers (and I use this term in a non-derogatory manner), who run not for the pursuit of excellence, but simply as a means to an end, I am telling you, without a morsel of doubt or hesitance, that you are missing out on experiences that epitomize human nature. To run for brief stints, or with indignance or indifference, or to not chase excellence, is only shorting yourself.
Running is one of the rawest, innately human activities. In its modern iteration, it is meditative in a primordial way while also exemplifying the idiosyncrasies of human cognition; hardened runners will run for one or two hours every day with little to no distractions and minimal equipment as though it is essential for survival, all in hopes of shaving a couple seconds off their personal bests.
They are obsessed with time, knowing it is for better and for worse. Time, mind you, is how we measure our success and progress, yet it is a societal creation made during the Industrial Revolution to standardize the workday, a figment of our imaginations.
Yet running’s allure is reflected in our neurochemistry — our brains are coded to become addicted to it and addicted just as powerfully as the most potent drugs. Despite the opioid-inducing, cannabinoid-creating effects, running is hated by the masses for its arduousness. I can’t deny running is masochistic in a way. But hating running is a reflection of our detachment from both the denotation and connotation of “being human”.
Six words, to me, define running: silence, discipline, pain, movement, vigor, and vulnerability. All these concepts are the antitheses of contemporary life. The world is marked by comfort (physical, emotional, and cognitive), hyperstimulation, distraction, and inactivity.
Take a rather mundane example of watching a movie at home. To watch the movie, you sit on your couch in an unnatural, unsupportive position such that you end up with neck or back pain, which is masqueraded by the addictive properties of the blue light screen you watch the film on.
The pleasure chemicals released from fixating on the screen disguise, not solve, any stressors you are experiencing and propagate the likelihood of participating in the same activity again.
While you watch the film, ads appear every 15 minutes or so, conditioning your brain to abnormally cleave its attention span (as an aside, something to consider is if ADHD prevalence is actually increasing because we are better at identifying it, or if our lifestyle is frying our brains).
Nobody likes ads, so we all go on our phones during them, phones which are the epitome of short-term pleasure enhancers. This rapidly reinforces a short attention span, and thus lack of discipline, and overstimulation.
And so, we sit there for a couple hours repeating this cycle until the film ends. And then we keep sitting and go on our phones afterwards because we’re too bored and tired to do anything else.
Despite our innate physiological and anatomical adaptations to move, it feels so unnatural, so discomforting for many because we’ve adapted to be anti-human. To run is to ostracize our synthetic comforts and mindfully embrace the transient self. To run is to reconnect with the evolutionary adaptations we have been bestowed, those which make us uniquely human.
But there’s more. It’s more than about feeling human and feeling grounded in your body. It’s about transcending yourself.
Imagine the sound of your feet pounding the ground. Now imagine sound repeating for miles and miles at 160, 170, 180 steps per minute. For a normal 30 minute run, you could hear that sound 5,000 or more times.
To many, that sounds a lot like Chinese water torture. It is boredom incarnate: senseless repetition with no reprieve or distraction, an endless karma cycle.
But after a few runs, the taunting nature of those steps begins to melt into a panacea, much like snow giving way to spring flowers. It is the one thing that is constant in an activity that may vary in setting, difficulty, community, or conditions.
And so, it is no wonder runners find comfort, even awe, in the sound of footsteps; it’s not only a security blanket but a call of unity for all runners. When you hear the sound of beating footsteps, you know there is someone you can viscerally relate to. This shared experience catalyzes deep community and relationships, something I think we deeply miss in contemporary society.
And by finding comfort in a stereotypically boring, monotonous sound, you are transcending your instincts (instincts which are so challenging to overcome; think reflexively grabbing your phone when a notification pops up), which provides a feeling of agency. Further, you are transcending the feeling of boredom to reach a “liberated” state.
I say it’s a state of liberation because we are oft slaves to emotions (something which is not necessarily bad, just simply part of the human experience) and by breaking free of emotions, or learning how to temper them, we can experience what feels like a supra-human consciousness to reinforce our agency and sense of importance.
And perhaps since we have adapted to become anti-human, this liberation simply allows for a return to human nature. We are no longer controlled by our emotions, but can observe them and respond to them appropriately, without exaggeration or dramatization.
And this isn’t just with boredom; you can be free of any emotions you start a run with: sadness, frustration, anxiety, etc. For me, the cyclic, repetitive nature of running is a simple, slow-burning release of overwhelming emotions, and once you learn to run “mindlessly” (i.e. experience the run fully without distractions) you brain can work through any issues in the background without requiring cognitive effort, a much needed break from our hyper-stimulated world.
Since running naturally induces opioids and endorphins, it tends to naturally disguise negative emotions too, without any additional effort. Lean into any positive feelings you get from running.
But you can’t reach this state with indignance or indifference, as I stated before. You have to want this feeling; you have to want to run. Reluctance acts as a forcefield to the pleasures of running. Having desire signifies you are willing to accept the gifts running has to offer.
So instead of approaching running with the mindset of “I need to do this run to progress my weight loss goals” or “I’m only running to build fitness for x sport/activity,” try thinking how lucky you are to be physically able to run, how much of a privilege it is to have found the time for this run, and to be anatomically and physiologically adapted to have the capacity to run! You could be a koala, cute but not capable of doing a lot besides moving inchmeal and eating poisonous leaves.
Simply appreciating the beauty of running is a highway to yearning for excellence; personally, I find enjoyment a gateway to doing something more, and when you do something more, you will naturally become better at it, a positive reinforcement cycle.
Go to most track meets or major road races and you will see the most visceral scenes. There are troves of athletes willingly pushing their limits until they cross into the realm of agony. You see gamut of coping mechanisms: grimaces, uncouth form, vomiting, dyspnea… it is a carnival of masochism.
But without this horror, there is no beauty.
So where is the beauty? Why do people do this willingly? It is to cleave seconds, even tenths of a second, off their personal bests. Knowing that you objectively are better than you’ve ever been is the highest form of satisfaction.
Other forms of improvement, such as job performance checks, involve more subjectivity, making them somewhat less satisfying. Gaining approval from others is exciting, but gaining approval from yourself is enlightening.
However, the screams of joy and arms aloft you see at races are not just because athletes have better themselves, it is also because they have transcended their previous conceived limits… and societal to constraints.
To me, a primary reason runners are obsessed with time is because of the manmade origins of time. We are slaves to time. We clock in and out of work, making sure to get our required hours in.
We are constrained in what we do and when we do it because of time; there are only 24 hours in a day, many of which are dedicated to basic life functions and work. We must wake up and sleep at a certain time in order to achieve these things. I think everyone’s life would be made easier with more time.
But time, despite how integrated it is into our lives, is alien and artificial, as mentioned earlier. It is an instigator in making us anti-human. With time constraints come time crunches and related stressors, sucking our vitality away, exacerbated by the workday limiting our movement to abnormal physiological levels.
We become exhausted, having little to no cognitive capacity for discipline or being alone with our thoughts; we must be distracted. Time, literally and figuratively, is the human killer.
By bettering our times, we are transcending a societal constraint, but also figuratively winning the battle against time for our humanity. Being better than the clock is a sort of F-U, a one-up on the system that subdues us.
We take time for granted, as though we can’t do anything to resist it. But running lets us take back some control. Not just over time, but over ourselves, over the deleterious pressures and facets of society. It’s not comfortable.
Nothing ever is when you’re not used to it. However, only through discomfort can we grow and adapt, a fundamental part of being human.
Reconnect with your humanity. Reconnect with your unique anatomical gifts. Go for a run.
