At a recent networking meeting, I was talking to an acquaintance and the conversation turned to running. I mentioned that I was a long time runner and asked him if he ran. He responded by saying, not really, he was more a jogger (terrible word, I hesitate to use it even here!). So I asked him, “do you mean that you jog out to the mailbox to pick up the mail and jog back?” No, he replied, I just don’t run very fast and go very far. I responded and told him that he IS a runner. The fact that he laces up his sneakers and gets on the road, the trail or the treadmill makes him a runner.
I’ve had other people explain to me, in all seriousness, that they don’t run because they are not “built like” a runner. Perhaps they’ve watched a marathon on TV and seen elite runners with their lean, lithe bodies gracefully and seemingly effortlessly gliding along the pavement. Well, hell, folks, none of the other 99.9% of us runners look like that! Never have, never will. Just go to a local 5K or 10K race sometime and see what we really look like. Chances are you’ll fit in just fine. I saw a young, overweight woman who, if you asked me, I would have said couldn’t run 2 miles, actually finish a marathon. It took her over 6 hours but, damn, she was a runner!
Others have told me that they’ve heard or read that running is bad for you. I even had someone tell me that their doctor did not recommend running because it “jiggles up all your parts inside”. This from a doctor! I would be interested to know where that “doctor” went to medical school. Can you get hurt running? Sure, but you can get hurt doing any kind of physical activity whether it be going for a walk, cutting the grass or lifting weights at the gym.
The fact of the matter is, of all the physical activities you can do, running is the one activity that the human body is mostly built for. When we came down out of the trees 2 million years ago we learned how to run, either to catch food or not be caught as food (eat or be eaten). Over the millennia we evolved to be very good at running. Our body is built for running. Our feet, ankles, legs, torso evolved to turn us into efficient runners. Just watch little kids on the playground. They run naturally because it is natural. It’s only when at the age of 4 or 5, we place them in a box (school), throw stuff at them (teaching) and hope it sticks. And nowadays since very few go home to chores on the farm they go home to sit on the sofa and watch TV or play video games.
It’s not that we’re not built to run, it’s just that our society has taken that skill away from us. There are tribes in Africa who still run daily (it’s no surprise that many elite runners are from African nations) and there is a tribe in Mexico (The Tarahumera) who are known for running long distances. So when someone says that you can’t be a runner, don’t believe them, evolution says otherwise.
So get up, dress up, show up and show us what you can do.
