Running Nowhere

I have started running in my 30’s. I’ve never been a runner. My sports career was football, roller hockey and any backyard tournament action I could find. At 5’10” and averaging 230 lbs, speed and longevity were not always my friend. So why did I start in my 30s?

I like lifting weights and competing but as I got older I couldn’t find a training system that connected with me. I was becoming stagnant, fatter and frankly depressed. I was broke and I had no real access to a gym so I started lightly jogging. Then I started slowly adding distance. Then life, lifed again and I stopped running. Then I met my wife. She was a track athlete in college and consistently ran distance. She never missed a chance to run, it was an escape.

In an attempt to impress her I started to run with her. However, while running I would notice her visibly slowing down to keep pace for me. I felt miserable. I was taking something from her in an attempt to join her in something. It is when I started putting in more effort on solo runs, but I couldn’t break over the hump. One day while hitting that casual 11 minute mile pace, the combination of frustration with running and not understanding the purpose was driving me mad. I stewed on it while I ran, breaking down all the things that made me angry. I started walking through the things in life that also made me angry, and next thing I knew I finished my run. I wasn’t tired and was still battling brain demons so I continued. I no longer cared about the pace or the distance, just the time with myself to challenge myself. At the end of the run, I felt incredible. Not just the cardiovascular pump, or that I felt lean, but that my mind and body finally felt like they had been fully worked.

Now I don’t run with my wife. I let her have her escape and time to reflect. We find opportunities to do running events together, but at the end of the day, this is our meditation. I don’t have a goal to be a “runner” or hit some fantasy distance. I just want to keep pushing my legs and brain to fill fulfilled before I end my day. In a world full of turning passing interests into lifelong careers, it’s nice to just run away.