WHY DO WE DO IT?
Why did you become a runner?
Are you a member of a high school or college team training year around?
Are you a former jock who still wants to compete?
Are you health conscious and willing to make that extra effort to improve the quality of your life?
Not all of us run for the same reasons or got into the sport the same way. And I doubt if we all want or get the same rewards. That is how it should be for running is, if nothing else, the great individual sport. Everything we get from running is a result of what we put into it. There will be no team member to bail us out; to run the last mile for us. Whether running in a pack or alone, we have to carry the freight.
For myself, I became a runner because it was the only sport in which I saw myself having any success. I was short, skinny and uncoordinated. Golf was an option because we lived across the street from a golf course and I caddied for about ten years. However, I wasn’t prepared to give up the training time needed for running for the practice time needed for golf. So, I would run 18 or 36 holes every night rather than play them.
As I look back, I think I stayed with running as much for the people I met as for the sheer joy one feels when the running and racing are going well. For all it is an individual sport; training with a group and chattering away about God knows everything (once you get off the subject of shoes), the tension in the crowd before the race and the camaraderie afterwards, the chance to measure yourself against your competition, the coaches we remember and the friends who supported us, are reasons enough to be a runner.
I was a 115-pound freshman trying out for my high school football team and collecting splinters on the bench on Friday evenings when I had some success in an intra mural track meet. The freshman football coach who was overseeing the meet steered me into track and the truly great track coach at my high school believed in me, inspired me and became a role model. Over the years other individuals, some coaches but mostly training partners and competitors, showed the same love for the discipline, history, oddities and excitement that is in running and racing and I felt I belonged to a large and wonderful family.
If you are new to the running life, I envy you. All the wonderful people and pleasures you are yet to discover are just around that next bend in the road. If you are an old timer I share your pride. It takes will power and dedication to get out on the road or track and we know we have paid our dues.
Good people we meet and good memories of fun runs, close races and PR’s. I guess that’s why we do it!
Tom Coyne
April 16, 2003
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