suspect you’ll find my journey a familiar one. The details may be different, but the story of every runner has similar themes and milestones. In running we discover many things. I’ve tried to explore as many of those as possible as I share my love of the sport that has changed my life.
On the day I finished the final piece of writing for this book, I put on my gear to go for a short celebratory run. My son Jack, who was twenty-two months old, looked at me in my running shoes and said, for the first time in his life, “Daddy run.”
This is why I do.
Running forward, looking back
iRun for my past, now and future Monica Anthony, Ontario
According to clichés and rock songs, you’re not supposed to look back. Looking back is associated with regret, remorse and other unhealthy instincts. Indeed, in running and life it’s better to be facing forward than looking over your shoulder.
But sometimes, as long as you’re not in the middle of a crowded race or on a trail run through the forest or wallowing in self-pity, it can be helpful to look at the road behind you. You may find it reassuring to see how far you’ve come.
I used to keep track of almost every single time I exercised (I can’t help it, I’m like that). So one day, when I happened to stumble upon my training log from 2001, it was a chance to look into a bit of a runner’s time capsule.
In March 2001, I couldn’t call myself a runner. I was just a guy trying to stay in shape. Mostly I went to the gym and rode a stationary bike while reading the morning newspaper (that’s how strenuous it was) and lifted a few very light weights. My goal was to get about thirty minutes of exercise four or five times a week. In other words, the bare minimum.
I ran sometimes, usually on a treadmill and once in a while, when the weather was good, outside. But even when I ran, I didn’t call it running. In early April 2001, according to my training log, I went “jogging” for half an hour.
Jogging is a word I have not used in a long time. According to Wikipedia, jogging is “a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace.” Yeah, that pretty much describes me at the turn of the century. Trotting. Slow. Leisurely.
In 2001, running wasn’t part of my vocabulary, much less my lifestyle or my career. I had never even considered running in a race, so there wasn’t a collection of number bibs and finish-line photos stuck on a wall in my den. Wet and smelly running clothes weren’t hanging from every banister in the house. I didn’t know what a personal best was, let alone have one at any distance. Gift certificates from running stores were not the default birthday and Christmas presents from close family.
When I ran – or jogged – I wore a lot of grey and white cotton. I looked like Rocky in that famous scene when he climbs the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, only slower and less inspiring. I usually wore a ball cap from the Baseball Hall of Fame. I don’t know what brand of shoes I wore, but they were the same ones I used to play squash.
A marathon? That was for crazy people. I got in my car and mapped out two 5k routes through my neighbourhood and figured that would be as far as I would ever need to go. Once in a while, I would get really ambitious and tack on an extra kilometre or so, noting it carefully in my log.
Somewhere far in the future, I would finally stop writing down every single run. By then I had a fancy watch that was recording them all anyway. But I think running became such a regular part of my life that it didn’t seem worth noting anymore. I don’t keep a sleeping log. I don’t write down every time I go to work. Why would I record all my runs?
(There is one other major difference between then and now, according to my training log: after every single run in 2001, I did a lot of stretching.)
But at the start of the new millennium, I was, by my own description, a jogger.
On April 22, 2001, I entered my first event, a 5k race. I enjoyed the experience, but that’s not when I got hooked. I didn’t do another race for more than two years.
Back then, I didn’t expect I would ever be a serious runner, with all the wick-away gear and gadgets, much less somebody who wrote, spoke and published a magazine about running. But somewhere along the way, something changed, other than the fact that I stopped stretching after my runs.
In that exercise log from 2001, I start using the word “running” in September. I don’t know whether it was because I was getting a little bit more serious about it, or whether “jogging” just didn’t sound cool enough anymore.
It would be another six months before I decided one day, on a whim towards the end of my regular run, to do a second lap and run ten kilometres for the first time in my life (I figured it would be easier to decide to do a 10k run when I’d already run 5k than when I was starting from home). It would be almost another two years before I would run my first half-marathon, still draped in cotton and a baseball cap. My first winter of running outside was a few years away. And my first marathon, and that moment when Running Room founder John Stanton referred to me and all the others crossing the finish line as “runners” and “athletes” and I thought, “Yeah, I’m a runner” – that was almost three years in the future.
It’s powerful to see how far you can travel in a relatively short period of time, literally one step at a time. When someone says to me, “I could never be a runner,” I always point out I didn’t start out as one either.
Because somewhere between March and September of 2001, I stopped jogging and started running. And until now, I have never looked back.
Why I Run
iRun for no particular reason Scott Moore, Ontario
Because it can give you an ache in your legs that you feel with every step, and you love it because you know you’ve earned it, because you’ve just done something hard.
Because it is hard.
Because you can take it anywhere, on business trips, on vacations, to the cottage.
Because you don’t have to book a court or make a date with a partner. You don’t need any equipment except your shoes.
Because it clears your head.
Because it makes you feel like you’re cheating the aging process.
Because you can use it to justify eating almost anything you want.
Because you can do it by yourself, with a friend, in small groups or large.
Because you can learn a new little technique and try it out and always hang on to the hope you can get a little bit better.
Because when there’s madness all around you and you’ve had an incredibly frustrating day, it can help you put everything back in perspective.
Because you don’t need to pay a membership fee or wait in line for a machine.
Because you can do it while you watch the sun going up or down.
Because you can do it before the sun comes up and feel like you’re ahead of the game.
Because you can do it after the sun goes down and taste the crisp night air and feel cool and warm at the same time.
Because
