daily epiphanies

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I took on another “elite” athlete this month. He is a bonafide sub-4:00 miler and an English major - how could I refuse?!
To help me get to know him (as a runner and otherwise), I assigned him an essay … Why do you run?

Here’s what he turned in (re-printed with permission):

Joan,

Now that we’ve officially met, albeit in whirlwind fashion, I think
it’s about time I finally e-mail this essay about why I run. It’s
taken me weeks of painstaking thought. I’ve had to retrace every step
from my first official practice to the most recent race I’ve run. I
still don’t feel ready to talk about it. I didn’t realize that I had
so much emotion buried inside of me concerning running. But I’ll do
my best to convey my reasons for competing in this sport. Here goes:

Thinking about why I run has directed me to realize many reasons why I
do NOT run. I do not run for fun. I don’t run for fame. I’m
definitely not doing it for fortune. There is a primal necessity that
competing in this sport has wrought in me. I need to be satisfied. I
haven’t felt it yet. I need to compete until I feel that
satisfaction. I know it’s out there. It might not come after the
perfect race, but it come after a race that I’ve spent thousands of
hours preparing for and feel contentment directly upon crossing the
finish line. I need to work harder than everyone else out there in
order to achieve this. I need to work harder than everyone else
simply in order to sleep at night.

Running is something I don’t think about. It’s action before
thought. If I have to do a morning run at 4:30 am before work, I get
up and do it. If it’s 20 degrees below zero and I need to run 10
miles, I’m out the door covering my face in the wind. If I have to do
10 intervals and I’m suffering on the second one, I do all ten. If my
foot, ankle, knee, IT ban, sciatic or anything else on my body hurts,
I run until it goes away (as long as it’s not debilitating me to a
hobble). I’ve been noted as being perfectly “coachable,” to a fault.
I’m ready to listen to my body and train intelligently. I’m very
concerned that without supervision I will run my body into the
ground. I need your help.

I could write hundreds of pages on this topic. I have several drafts
about why I run, all of which are different from this one. This seems
to be the most direct cause though; this explanation is the sum of my
passion, angst, eccentricity and anxiety. I am using the “perfect
race” as an anecdote. Simply put, I am not ready to stop competing.
There is no one reason why I run other than barbaric instinct.
Running hasn’t just shaped who I am, it is who I am.

I’ve been fighting my way through this sport since the beginning and
will not stop.

Jason Jabaut

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 12:15 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.