I used to hate running. Hatehatehate it.
They always made us run the mile. Fuck that shit. When in life are you ever going to have to run a mile? If you’re being chased by a robber, you think he’s gonna stop and keel over after just a mile?
Well, if you rob a Waffle House, maybe.
Otherwise, it’s a useless life skill.
They would use it to test “fitness”, which is one of those vague and ambiguous terms like “gifted” and “Tex-Mex” and “not tonight”.
I knew kids who were awesome sprinters in Track & Field—some of the fastest people in the state. They tried running a mile and made it like, 5 yards.
It’s a bizarre one-size-fits-all measurement of how “fit” you are.
Cross Country was the first school-official “team” sport I was on. And I sucked. It must be awful for a parent to have to see your kid run in a circle to win a trophy, especially when your kid wins at “almost dead last” barely outpacing the kids with polio.
In the years since I was frequently the last-place arm-shuffler puffing on an inhaler and being outrun by the fat kids walking, I haven’t had an opportunity nor a desire to run.
Then one day I was feeling like crap.
Literally, miserable and crappy.
My insides had liquefied into shit.
A friend told me I should go for a run to calm down and clear my head.
I scoffed.
“SCOFF”, I said. “How will me making myself feel worse make myself feel better?!”
Eventually I relented, and put on the weightless feels-like-you’re-wearing-newspaper-on-your-toes-or-some-shit-running-shoes I had bought a year ago and started running around my block.
For some reason, I started feeling pretty okay. I wasn’t wheezing and cramping.
I pushed myself a little further, and a little further, and afterward, I felt amazing. High. Sweaty as all hell but loving it.
I was immediately suspicious.
This had to be some sort of a trap.
I tried it again, and got the same results.
Eventually I built myself up to run almost every day for about 15-30 minutes.
I learned that, apparently, running makes you feel the same endorphins as crying, and can actually boost your mood instead of allowing you to wallow in it.
Which is why this lady must be the happiest woman on earth:
On Sunday, [41-year-old Annette Fredskov of Næstved] completed a full year in which she ran a marathon every single day. That’s 42.195 kilometres every single day, regardless of weather or exhausted legs. And on the final day, she upped the ante and ran two.
It puts my 15 minutes or so a day to shame and lots of people’s “sit at home and watch Duck Dynasty with hand in crotch” really to shame.
Kudos to Annette.
And it just goes to show—if my coughing, hacking, side-stitching, bone-idle ass can start to enjoy running—so can yours.
