I guess I need to make this area my own, to shape it how I want it, although my wants are pretty simple – just some space so I can write about running. I’m not sure if I’ll have any guests, but I might as well carry on as if someone might arrive at any time, unexpectedly – keep three chairs instead of just one, as Thoreau might counsel. And even if nobody does drop by – who cares? At least I won’t be walking down the street muttering to myself about split times and lactate thresholds, grabbing hold of some terrified pedestrian, “Can YOU tell me what my max HR is?!” I can spill my guts about running here and nobody has to get hurt… or bored. Freedom for you, gentle reader, is only a mouse click away.
But how best to lay the foundations of this bloggy little hermitage of mine? Hmm. Perhaps I should answer a few relevant “W” questions: Who? What? and Why?
Who?
Even though my hope is that this blog will explore much more than just my running, a little bio might help to start things off. Besides, I love to read about other runners, so why not add my story to the pile?
I loved running as a kid – even ran track for a year in high school, although volleyball and soccer were more my thing back then. I was a pretty mediocre runner (55 for the 400, 2:08 for the 800 – if I remember correctly!), but I loved it – especially getting up at dawn and running through Lemoine’s Point (in Kingston, Ontario). I’ve got so many great memories of syrupy morning light, frost-tinged leaves on the path, lonely shoes crunching on gravel, and the calm reaches of Lake Ontario spreading far into the distance from grey limestone shores.
My love of running lasted partway into university… until I found a new love: beer, cigarettes, and fatty foods. I can hardly believe it now, but by the time I was in the second year of my PhD, I was 50lbs overweight and sprouting a very nice set of man boobs.
The funny thing (other than the moobs) was how long it took me to realize fully what was happening. I knew I was overweight and out of shape – I could see it and feel it – but I still thought of myself as an athlete (nurturing self-delusions is a strength of mine). The turning point came when I happened to step on a scale that was lurking in the corner of a friend’s bathroom – the trembling needle strained all the way over the 200 mark.
That was the moment I decided to run a marathon.
During the summer of 2003, I walked a lot and started running – I could barely run for 15 minutes at first, which was more than a little frustrating. But I stuck with it, and with the help of my partner Julie-Ann (we’re married now), I changed my lifestyle completely: we ate healthier, I quit smoking, and I paid fewer visits to the public house, with its unhealthy mix of late-night liquid exuberance and misery. The weight came off quickly – and it has stayed off.
Using the great Hal Higdon’s on-line training schedules, I trained over the winter of 2003-2004 for a half-marathon. I also joined Good Life and went to the gym religiously – I have to admit, I loved Body Pump! Things progressed smoothly, and in the spring of 2004, I ran the Forest City Half (London, Ontario) in 1:30.
I can’t say that I’ve accomplished much in my life – and I can’t say that my running a Half was particularly astonishing – but regardless, it was one of the proudest moments I’ve experienced. Symbolically, crossing that first finish line marked the end of a struggle to change the way I was living life – I’d transformed old, entrenched, unhealthy patterns of thought and behaviour for the better. For me, that was pretty big.
But really, it was only the beginning. I’d been converted – reborn in running, so to speak.
From the half, I moved to the full and ran the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in September of 2004. I totally hit the wall at 20 miles and struggled for a 3:20, but what the hay, right – I’d finished a marathon. Besides, I ran the Forest City Marathon the next May and qualified for Boston with a 3:07. I’d gone from overweight and dragging my butt for 15 minutes to Boston qualifier in a couple of years. It was a good feeling.
In 2005, Julie-Ann and I moved to Nova Scotia, and I’ve been running races as a Run Nova Scotia member ever since. I’ve even won a few races – ones that the really fast folks didn’t show up to, of course!
It’s difficult to express how much running has meant to me, how much it has positively transformed so many aspects of my life – so I’m not even going to try here. Part of the purpose of this blog is to explore all those influences over time and to watch how they change as life goes on. All I can say for sure is that I’m passionate about running.
Joseph Campbell, the great expounder of world myth (and a world-class miler in his day), said to “follow your bliss” wherever you found it. Well, I’ve found part of my bliss in running – and ever since, I’ve been following it as fast as my hairy little legs will take me!
What?
Basically, I want to write about running. But as I said earlier, I don’t want to focus only on my running; I also want to write about the running scene in Nova Scotia, about other runners, and about any thoughts or ideas that concern running. There are so many aspects to running – I want to explore as many as I can over time.
So this is not the typical “I’m training for this goal race and tracking my progress towards it” kind of blog. Don’t get me wrong – I love those kinds of blogs. They have a certain drama to them, a familiar and compelling narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end: there’s a clear motivation, there are challenges to be overcome, and there’s an exhilarating final climactic scene. Tracking someone’s progress towards a goal race is exciting, but it’s not all that I’m interested in.
I want to be a bit more like George Sheehan, who liked to explore a broad range of thoughts that arose from his running. There’s just so much to talk about, from my own training and what’s going on in Nova Scotia to more philosophical issues. So my plan is that this blog will be a bit of a grab bag of stuff – a place to express all my running interests. Actually, my faint hope is that other like-minded folks will somehow stumble across this site and share their own thoughts – perhaps eventually some kind of alternative to the glossy running mags will take root… who knows?
Why?
I’ve read in so many different places the same piece of advice about life: find what it is you love to do and (for pete’s sake!) do it, no matter how silly it seems at first. The most recent iteration of that idea I’ve read was in Karen Armstrong’s memoirs: “[We should] find something that wholly involves and enthrals us, even if it seems hopelessly unfashionable and unproductive, and throw ourselves into this, heart and soul. […] if we follow it to the end, it will take us to the heart of life.”
Well, I love to run and I love to write, so here I am creating a running blog – even if it sounds a bit silly to some. In fact, the amount of time I spend on training has certainly made me and others (but never my wonderfully supportive wife) more than a little uncomfortable. I mean, couldn’t I make better use of my time? After all, I’m never going to be the fastest guy on the block; I’m never going to earn money from running, so why spend so much time on it?
It seems to me, though, that you don’t need to be a world-class runner in order to benefit from throwing yourself into running. Perhaps you need to be world-class in order to make a living from running, but you don’t need to be fast in order to follow running into the heart of life. You just need to be sincere and run with your whole being – guilt-, fear-, and judgement-free. For those of us hopelessly smitten with running, the value is in the deep joy that arises from doing what we love. And perhaps joy is not such a bad thing.
In the end, I’m just an ordinary runner, and this is my blog…
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