Dear Running,: The "Thing" About Running

This run was for Jonah, a dear friend, a generous donor, and maybe a runner mentioned in a previous post...

On Sunday, May 19 I ran a 10K trail run. I had been itching to do a race, with all of the training I had been doing. Since March, I've run 242 miles, which is helping me approach my goal of 1000 miles this year. It's nice to do a race to keep training fresh, add some incentive and switch up the training.

The day before the race, I found myself talking to my wife, Kate about running. These days I love talking about running. I mean, it's almost obnoxious. I'll talk to anyone about running for as long as I can. Anyway, I found myself saying to Kate, "The thing I love about running is..." And then I realized, that I've said this a million times about a million different things. There is no one thing I love about running. There are a bunch. I used to tease my host sister in Mexico when she would say, "There's a saying in Mexico..." and I would respond, "Really? There's A saying in Mexico." Now I know how she must have felt. Sorry Jadwiga.

But back to the "thing" about running. That "thing," I explained to Kate as she patiently waited for my most recent diatribe to end, is that running and other individual sports don't rely on a winner for satisfaction. You are always competing against yourself.

You have the runs where every stride you take takes you farther than you've ever run before. I remember those runs with great fondness from last year. The reward that comes from doing a 2 mile, then 3 mile, then 5, 6, 7, 10, 13 mile run is incredible. There are few things better than coming back from a run that took you one mile farther than your farthest run.

There also comes a great satisfaction in breaking personal records. The swim coach and basketball coach of our middle school were talking about their respective tournaments during assembly and the swim coach beamed with satisfaction that everyone on the team had beaten personal, school or conference records. The basketball coach then goofed on the fact that they also "beat records." Of course, they didn't and that's the "thing" about running. Every time I run a route that I've planned and come home sooner than I did last time, it's an achievement. Every time I enter an event and finish with a PR, it's an achievement.

That's why I was so excited to run the 10K on Sunday. I've only ever run 2 other 10Ks, and the first was before I really became a runner, so I have no record of it. The other one was last year about this time and it was also a trail run. As far as I could recollect, my time from last year was about 50:30. With this in mind, I set out to beat that time. Just me against me. And whoever else showed up, but that's neither here nor there. Every race has faster runners and slower runners.

Zach(the swim coach), Brent and I attended the staff going-away party on Saturday night, then woke up at 4:15am, headed out the door and arrived to the venue at 5:30am. By 5:45 we were off on the 10K trail run. It was a really fun route that took us into a protected Aravalli bio-diversity park, the remnants of the 1500 million year old Aravalli mountain range, through the local villages and back. We passed temples, dogs, wild pigs and more on the cross-country run. It was the first time for a new running organization in Delhi to organize such an event and as you could expect there were freshman snags. The event was well organized in advance and the check-in was easy breezy. In fact the organizer had made special arrangements to help us register! The signage on the run wasn't great and the front runners of the 10K got lost on the way back to the finish. Being one of them, I convinced the other guy I was with to cut across a ravine to get back on track and we did. From there, we ran back to the finish and I was lucky enough to finish first.

When discussing my finish with my friends, I received the obvious congratulations for finishing first. But the "thing" about running isn't winning, it's beating your PR and doing the best you can on any given day. I tried to explain to a friend that winning the race wasn't that big of a deal. "It just means that I was faster than everyone else who showed up that day." Any other day, with any other runners and the story could be different. A broken PR though, can't be taken away. He replied by simply restating what I had said. "Exactly. You were faster than everyone else that day." Another friend helped me accept my fair share of joy when I said, "It's not that big of a deal." "You're right," he said, "but it's fun, isn't it?"

I guess it is fun, but I know that on any given day, there will be people much faster than me. And that's the "thing" about running. It doesn't matter. As long as I'm true to myself and true to my goals and true to my inspirations and motivators, I'll win. Thanks to Jonah, Zach and Brent for the motivation to get up too early after a night too late. Thanks to my family for giving me a reason to run, and thanks to all of you who read the blog. It's not too late to add to my inspiration. If you can donate a few dollars, it's enough to get me out the door on the days that I want to stay in bed, cozying up to my wife and son.

Oh, and we had moustaches!

Please visit https://www.coloradogives.org/forellis and see why I'm running this year.