So, Ginny is right. Running is non-negotiable. There are a lot of things I’d give up, including sleep, before I’d give up one of my scheduled runs.
But it didn’t start out that way. Frankly, I find it extraordinary to call myself a runner, to be someone whose inflexibility over training for a half-marathon or marathon would be an inconvenience to the important people in my life, someone who gets asked regularly, “Did you run today?” by a large number of people who are aware of my obsession.
My parents were not into sports, so I wasn’t a particularly active kid. I played little league baseball and shot some hoops at the park across the street. But I didn’t run track or cross-country in high school. There were no trophies or medals in my bedroom as a teenager (except one or two for math). The best word to describe my relationship with sports at that time in my life would have been “spectator.”
A friend in high school trained for the Ottawa Marathon one year and I thought it was an utterly unachievable task, something only a superhuman could do. I asked him a lot of questions about it, but I found it impossible to grasp the distance or the training commitment. I tried running a few times as a teenager but I usually ran too fast too soon and ended up coughing up a lung about five blocks from home.
In the late 1980s, I covered the Ottawa Marathon for the local radio station I worked for. I remember being impressed enough to consider training for the marathon the following year, but I never got started. But my experience covering the race did lead to a misunderstanding that lasted for several years.
When I told an acquaintance that I had thoroughly enjoyed watching the marathon, he said, “A bunch of us are going down to the New York Marathon this year. You should join us.”
For some reason I assumed he meant they were going to watch the race, not run in it. So I said, “Sure. Sounds great.” A week later, he sent me an application form.
I found some way to get out of going, but for the next few years whenever I ran into him, he would ask, “How’s the running going?” and I would mutter something about not having had time to run recently.
Many years later, I did become a runner. But I’m not a particularly special one. I’m not, for example, one of those lucky people who discovered, upon taking up running as adults, that they were incredibly fast. The only time I’ve broken the tape at a finish line was at an event where I was the only participant. I’m certainly not an elite athlete.
I haven’t defied the odds to become a runner. I’m not a cancer survivor. I didn’t lose 100 pounds in one year. I didn’t overcome a serious disability, illness or injury to run a marathon.
I’m just an ordinary guy who, like so many others, started running as a form of exercise and discovered, much to my surprise, an activity I grew to love so much that it became part of my way of life – a non-negotiable part, it turns out.
Along the way, however, I discovered something I never expected: that the journey of a runner is remarkable even if the runner isn’t.
I started running in my thirties, just to stay in shape. By the time I ran my first marathon, in 2004, I was hooked. Running has become for me a hobby, a challenge, a tonic, a social activity, a creative outlet. It is often a source of joy and sometimes a cause of extreme frustration.
I’m thinner than I was before and I feel like I’m in much better shape, but otherwise running has not transformed me physically. Nevertheless, it has dramatically altered me both emotionally and spiritually.
As a child and teenager, I lacked confidence. I questioned my own fortitude. I even thought of myself as a bit of a wimp sometimes. In running, however, especially in those final few kilometres of a half-marathon or marathon, I discovered something new about myself, a toughness and persistence I didn’t know was there.
It’s impossible to overstate the impact of that discovery on me and many other runners I’ve talked to. It’s amazing what running farther than you ever thought possible will do to your perception of yourself and the path in front of you. I don’t know how many times I’ve said to myself in the last seven years, when approaching a challenging task, “If I can run a marathon, surely I can do this.”
Having witnessed that transformation in myself and many others, I was inspired to start writing about running. It led to a weekly column in the Ottawa Citizen, then the launch of iRun, a national magazine and website for Canadian runners, and a weekly radio show and podcast about running. And, ultimately, to this book.
In the pages ahead, I explore my path from the sideline to the starting line, from motionlessness to the marathon, in a series of running stories which I’ve written over the past five years. Each stands alone, so you don’t have to read them in any particular order. But together, they chronicle my personal journey as a runner.
A big part of that passage has been the inspiring runners I’ve met along the way: elite athletes such as Dean Karnazes, Silvia Ruegger, Simon Whitfield and Adam van Koeverden; runners who have made spectacular comebacks from illness or injury, such as Rick Ball, Jody Mitic and Shelby Hayter; and everyday runners doing extraordinary things, including Rick Rayman, Gavin Lumsden and Shelley Morris.
You’ll read about the day I started calling myself a runner, what it was like stumbling through the woods on my first significant trail run, and the joy I had in seeing my closest friend qualify for the Boston Marathon, something I have yet to do.
And I’ll tell you what it was like running, at least until he left me behind, with Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote the foreword to this book.
I’ll also wade into some minor running controversies: Boston qualifying times, headphones in races and deaths at major marathon events. There is a lot about what inspires me, and what I hope will inspire you as well.
In the pages ahead, I try to provide a fresh perspective on the life of an everyday runner, one that is uniquely Canadian (watch for lots of references to kilometres and Terry Fox and winter). I believe the journey of a runner is very similar no matter how fast or how often it’s travelled, so I think there’s something here for everyone, from the novice to the experienced, from someone who runs 5k three times a week to the person training for an ultramarathon.
Throughout this book, you’ll also see a series of iRun statements, from among the thousands of one-sentence assertions about why we run that have been sent in from runners across Canada and around the world since we launched the magazine. Those small glimpses into the soul of other runners have always inspired me to carry on both running and writing about it.
Although I cover a lot of my own running experiences and profile the runners who have inspired me, I don’t think this book is just about me and them. If you run, I believe it’s also about you. Everyone who puts on a pair of running shoes makes a choice to move faster and farther than they would otherwise in everyday life. For me, it’s been a transformative decision.
I 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