OWL-DRAGON

Runner

A recent (and recurring) thread on the Dead Runners Society forum concerned the definition of a runner. The quote that started the discussion:

"Someone whose day's activities are controlled by his run rather than
whose run is controlled by his day's activities."

This led to a wider discussion of how we understand running and as runners often do whether jogging and running are the same.

Running (the definition) and senioritis (getting old and slow) and fear of getting on the road.

All recent themes on DRS. All themes I identified with.

Runner vs. Jogger. Who cares (although I do like George Sheehan: my version of his quote – the difference between a jogger and a runner: a race number). But note that I titled this essay Runner. Running is strong, powerful, primitive yet modern. Jogging is soft, easy, old fashion and out of date. We run with the antelopes we don’t jog with them.

The other day after being told by my favorite thrift shop that they would be delighter to take old T-shirts I gave away about a hundred race shirts from ten years ago. Many of them had never been worn. Many of the races I couldn’t even remember. Quite a few don’t even exist anymore. But it was fun to look them over (seems to be they use to much more fun and creative than the ones you see now). When I expressed amazement over the quantity my wife observed that I was crazy to run in those days. (I was always going to do something with those shirts – display them, make a quilt, but as they accumulated they ended up in totes and trash cans never to be seen again. Sigh!)

Was I runner then? Am I now?

Do you know that when I drive down the street and see a runner I instantly want to be on the road? Do you know that when I lined up for Broad Street I still had butterflies in my stomach even though I planned to go slow and easy? Do you know that even when I take 29 minutes to run a 5K I still lust after a medal?

I do like going fast. I once drove from Philadelphia to New York in 90 minutes. But of course in the real world it is neither safe nor sensible to drive all out (not to mention expensive if [when] you are stopped for speeding). But when I run I can go as fast as I want to – now sometimes (most times) that won’t be very fast but I am in control.

I written before about my running history but suffice to say there was a very long hiatus that was broken shortly before my fiftieth birthday. A baffling decision to run a marathon and to this day I cannot remember why such a goal entered my head. I do remember being at the Delaware Art Museum one year (this before I had started running) and seeing the Caesar Rodney Half Marathon in progress and being strongly drawn to things I would come to love: bibs, water tables, time clocks, the camaraderie of runners doing something hard. It’s possible that the idea percolated there. But that first 5K I ran really hooked me. A simple challenged by colleague to run (not race just run); then race brochures, then more races, then a seminar on running, a running group, a goal.

A decade of great fun and adventure. A devastating diagnosis. The grief cycle (although in my case something like denial, bargaining, denial, anger, bargaining, denial, anger, depression, acceptance, bargaining). Now I’m running – cautiously knowing there will be consequences, and yet . . . better to wear out then rust out.

So lots of words and no answer or definition. I still remember the neighborhood youngster who asked her mother when she saw me “jogging” home after a “run”: why is that man playing? That’s what we do and that defines a runner for me – someone at play, comfortable with their body (although not always happy with it) connected to the ground and air in a way mere mortals cannot fathom. (Have you ever come home from a race and pitied those poor slubs you encountered – what have they done today???)

Define a runner? Easier to define the big bang or quantum mechanics. It’s someone in motion perfectly in sync with all those dimensions of the universe hidden and seen.