Why so many writers are also runners
Running is the most democratic form of physical exercise.
It doesn’t require any purchase, although a pair of proper shoes is recommended. You can run at your own pace, whenever and wherever you feel like it. If you’re up for a 5KM at 1AM or during a snowstorm, the only person who can stop you from doing it is you. There’s nothing you need to know about running that you don’t already know before starting. Given that you are of able body and mind, you are always one decision away from becoming a runner.
I’ve been running for close to thirty years and I still see it. People running wearing jeans or cargo pants. Sometimes in work boots. They walked out of their home and into the park and just started running. They did not own any sports gear. They didn’t do research on the internet or think this through in any elaborate way. Runners run to feel good. They’re chasing a high that comes with pushing yourself and expanding the limits of what you’re capable of.
That’s why becoming a runner is such an important decision to make for oneself. It’s the conscious decision to embrace change by working on the only possible thing you have complete control over. Your own body. Because if you change one gear in the mechanism, it affects everything. You can’t change anything if you can’t change yourself and you change yourself by pushing the limits of what you’re capable of and running is the easiest way to get started.
The Poetics of the Furnace
I’m not the first nor the last writer to write about running. Haruki Murakami, Malcolm Gladwell, Ben Tanzer and countless others have championed the merits of running.
It’s a form of exercising that’s both extremely easy and ridiculously difficult. It’s also going to reward you with exactly what you put into it. If you pay attention, running is gonna tell you exactly who you are and it will reveal it when it starts to hurt. Experience runners know what I’m talking about. That burning feeling inside your chest when your lungs start reaching maximum capacity. I call this feeling “the furnace”.
The furnace is where hurt, stress and feelings of inadequacy are transformed. My chest is where my mind and body connect and I open it by running at maximum capacity.
I run to feel my problems physically. To give them a body I can destroy by using my mind. When a physical pain of my own doing takes over an emotional pain inflicted by something I have no control over, I can make a choice: either I stay with it and show it who’s the boss or I can let it teach me something about where I’m at mentally. Either way, I’ll be informed as to what the fuck is up with me or what hasn’t been happening at all.
When you’re playing with the fire of the furnace, you’re going to get burned here and there. You’re going to feel inadequacy, but the beautiful thing about it is that you’re also going to learn how to beat it. What’s mostly going to happen to you in the furnace is that you’re gonna gain a tolerance to heat and you’re going to get good at molding negative energy into productive output. The more you run, the better it’s going to feel.
The Runner As An Emotional Alchemist
I always run to music.
I run for many interconnected reasons, but getting alone time with my thoughts is an important one. It’s a moment I carved for myself to take my own bullshit seriously. I get to feel sorry for myself, mourn the versions of me who never were and feel whatever I’m not allowed to feel without being ridiculed. I reconcile with my own history of unsolicited pain by making myself suffer on purpose. You can only move past overpowering feelings by letting them through.
To connect with these feelings, I need a very precise selection of music. I love intense music in general, but connecting to my wounds requires music that I was connecting with whenever I was wounded. I’m a child of the millennium so you’ll find bands like Linkin Park, Slipknot, Killswitch Engage, August Burns Red, Judas Priest, Slayer and whatnot. Some of you might believe this is corny music, but I’ll counter by claiming it is music for volatile moments.
It feels corny when you’re not going through anything particular, but it makes a lot more sense when you’ve been through some shit. Meaning is forged through adversity.
When I decided to start running, the world around me wasn’t a nice place. There was violence in my life almost every day coming from one source or another. I was afraid to go to school. I was afraid to go home. There was nothing I could do about it but to work on myself and take the smallest step to making myself stronger and less afraid. That involved running myself into exhaustion and building a body and a mind that could withstand any form of punishment.
…and guess what? It worked, I won. I’ve healed myself and I’ve been healing myself ever since.
I don’t want to claim that running is a universal cure to everything. It’s not. I know that certain people suffering from deep depression can barely even get out of bed in the morning. These people won’t start running anytime soon and shouldn’t try to. There’s some steps to be taken before getting to it and there steps involve medical attention, but becoming a runner could be a middle to long term goal to aim for.
But running is an easy choice to make if you’re healthy enough to make it. You don’t need to know anything. You don’t need to buy anything either. If you feel the world is slipping away from under you when you look in the mirror, just step outside, find your nearest park and start running. No one will judge you. Fellow runners along the way will be happy to see you. Because we’ve been there.
Start rewriting yourself. Use what didn’t work to fuel a future that will.
