Long Distance Runner
What are you standing there for?
From Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius XV — On Brawn and Brains
It is indeed foolish, my dear Lucilius, and very unsuitable for a cultivated man, to work hard over developing the muscles and broadening the shoulders and strengthening the lungs. For although your heavy feeding produce good results and your sinews grow solid, you can never be a match, either in strength or in weight, for a first-class bull. Besides, by overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render it less active. Accordingly, limit the flesh as much as possible, and allow free play to the spirit. Many inconveniences beset those who devote themselves to such pursuits. In the first place, they have their exercises, at which they must work and waste their life-force and render it less fit to bear a strain or the severer studies. Second, their keen edge is dulled by heavy eating.
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Now there are short and simple exercises which tire the body rapidly, and so save our time; and time is something of which we ought to keep strict account. These exercises are running, brandishing weights, and jumping, — high-jumping or broad-jumping, or the kind which I may call, “the Priest’s dance,” or, in slighting terms, “the clothes-cleaner’s jump.” Select for practice any one of these, and you will find it plain and easy. But whatever you do, come back soon from body to mind. The mind must be exercised both day and night, for it is nourished by moderate labour. and this form of exercise need not be hampered by cold or hot weather, or even by old age. Cultivate that good which improves with the years.
In my last post I talked about some dated writing conventions and potential directions authors could take now that we are finally removing the shackles of the printing press. This post will attempt to follow through on some of those proposed conventions. Since it’s always easiest to write about what you know, and especially since this is Thanksgiving after all, I will turn focus away from geeky topics like physics or business and instead turn an immersive lens at a recreational interest, long distance running, including a few illustrative races of Central Florida.
Running as a sport is different from others. The competition aspect is generally absent for all but the most elite. For most amateurs any competition is usually against one’s self — escaping from a the cage of a training plateau, finding discipline to wake for early morning runs, fighting through the wall of exhaustion to reach that second wind.
Either pain affects the body (which is the body’s problem) or it affects the soul. But the soul can choose not to be affected, preserving its own serenity, its own tranquillity. All our decisions, urges, desires, aversions lie within. No evil can touch them. — Marcus Aurelius from Meditations
The sport of running can be a solitary form of meditation, with the exertion focusing the mind and allowing a certain kind of clarity not present at rest. Running, like golf, is a kind of journey, at both times an escape from and a celebration of repetition — a dichotomy lost on those foolish trainers who trade the scenery of the trail for the hamster wheel of a treadmill. The heightened experience of music on a run can serve as both a motivation and a distraction from the monotony of the road. Runners high, that release of endorphins and other euphoriants, can be every bit as intoxicating as a shot of whiskey. For others the sport is social, with running clubs, training partners, or even drinking clubs that target a multiplier effect to the intoxication through beer and games.
The training for some can be an end unto itself, but for most it is merely a stepping stone to ensure competitiveness in organized and timed races, where all of the sweat and early mornings are rewarded with a finisher’s medal, slice of an fruit, bottled water, and in some cases even free beer. Orlando’s Corporate 5K is a unique race for the city partly because of it’s large turnout of the less (how should we say?) athletically inclined but also because of the atmosphere resembling a football tailgate around Orlando’s Lake Eola (here in the south we take our tailgates very seriously). A tailgate is actually somewhat well-suited for a foot race and if most organized runs weren’t held so early in the morning I think we’d see more of them. Further enhancing the tailgate atmosphere is the built-in competition between participants representing most large employers in the city (hence the “Corporate” name). The corporate team-based competition in such a traditionally individual sport could almost be compared to PGA golfers competing in the biennial Ryder’s Cup tournament — it is most entertaining when those who compete for business extend into this kind of extracurricular rivalry. Some of these in-city rivalries, say Disney vs. Universal, are nearly as entertaining as an in-state collegiate football rivalries like UF vs. FSU or perhaps even interstate rivalries like UF vs LSU or UF vs UT. The problem with this particular race is that the crowd dynamic interferes with a runners ability to achieve personal milestones — there are so many runners packing the course that unless you are a top seeded athlete you basically end up walking the first mile, perhaps picking up a jog in the second, and only in the final third when the runners start to thin out can you finally achieve any kind of a decent pace. Thus any runner interested in actually reaching their potential may want to consider forgoing the Corporate 5k and instead joining or forming a small or medium sized running club of their own where they’ll have more opportunity to stretch their legs at capacity earlier in their running career.
The 5k can be a fun introduction to competitive running, but any runner interested in reaching a true zen state should consider longer distances. I find the 15k is the perfect length for balancing the benefits of exertion with a reasonable recovery time. The national championship for the 15k distance as well as the largest race of its kind is actually held close by in Jacksonville, FL with the annual Gate River Run. Even with the crowds this race opens on wider streets than the Corporate 5k with staggered corrals so traffic constraints on pace are less of an issue. The scenic route is particularly inspired, with the journey taking runners from the heart of downtown Jacksonville to the lush neighborhoods of San Marco overlooking the St Johns river, and over both the Main Street and Hart bridges. The Hart bridge in particular is a defining feature of this race, with it’s long and intense slope starting at mile 8, forcing an already tired runner to dig ever deeper to climb that peak, where he is finally rewarded with a downhill sprint to the finish line.
While downhill sprints can be a fun and invigorating reward for the exertion of a climb, they also have certain risks about them, with those Florida runners less accustomed to hills perhaps tempting a fall or even worse a heightened risk of shin splints, a common and nagging runners injury. It is a sad fact that most runners will eventually suffer injury. There are steps we can take to lower risks — we can trade the hard concrete and asphalt surfaces for the lowered impact of adjacent lawns; we can work on our form to achieve proper mechanics; we can vary our workouts to include days for stretching, weights, or the all important days of rest; we can even trade the marathons of long distances for the more condensed and efficient sprints and high intensity interval training. Even with those mitigators, any time you are subjecting your body to the impact of repetitive stressors over time your chances of repetitive stress disorder are material — whether a runner’s legs, a swimmer’s shoulders, a typist’s wrists, or perhaps even those life stressors like rush-hour commutes that impact us on a more spiritual level.
Disease is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will itself chooses. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will. And add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens; for you will find it an impediment to something else, but not to yourself. — Epictetus from the Enchiridion
For those athletes that do find repetitive stress disorder taking it’s toll, perhaps with their legs just having just given out on them, there can always be found comfort in the teachings of the stoic philosophers, the wisdom of our elders. We can also look to those who merely by circumstance never had the pleasure of a simple jog, but found fulfillment elsewhere. If we are lucky one day we may return to the trails, but if God wills it not to be then we will survive just fine otherwise.
My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically. — Stephen Hawking
Cripple my hand, foot, hip; shake out my loose teeth: while there’s life, ’tis well. — Seneca from Letters from a Stoic
I have never run a marathon, and God knows if I ever will, but have ventured into a few half marathons here and there. I find the distance a challenge, and given my awkward gait this is the length where I start being assured of more than just regular aches and pains, so injury really becomes a factor. Even with those risks, the feeling of accomplishment, the payoff of the months of progressively longer weekend runs and the thrill of the challenge, make it all worthwhile. Orlando has several half races to choose from, those offered by Disney are particularly fun and polished — between costumed runners, greetings by Disney characters, and actually getting to run through their theme parks (!) (coupled with the barren roads in between), they are a unique race experience. However a particular downtown event that I have found both refreshingly light-hearted and well organized is called the Best Damn Race. Offering lengths of half, 10k, and 5k, the event takes the dynamics of the corporate 5k and twists them on their head. Whereas the Corporate 5k starts with a mass of runners and only gradually thins out, the Best’s half marathon is small enough that overcrowding of opening miles is not a problem, and as the miles tick on the other runners slowly thin out to the point in the closing miles where only a handful of runners are ever even visible. Slowly the solitary tread of a run takes over, the drums of a pace beating a rhythm to a trance-like spirit journey, perhaps with the notes of a song peaking through your earphones to the exertion or perhaps just with the structured breathing offering distraction from the wear, with each step finding the will for just a few more and then again, the euphoria and fatigue rising and falling in counterbalanced waves of progression, the stresses of life slowly peeling back to just a single point of focus — the immediate challenge in front of you. A flow. Then just as you are getting lost in your solitude, as the din of your surroundings and the few cheering spectators fading further behind the fog of effort, a part of you sees a commotion ahead. A crowd of runners merging into your lane, sprinting and fresh, these are the runners from the Best Damn 5k, whose start time was set to ensure runners from both the half marathon and 5k would share the final mile in one common sprint for the end zone. The sudden discovery of your fresh and mobile partners offering an unexpected burst of adrenaline and energy, which carries you from the rabbit hole all the way to the finish line.
*For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.
Books that were referenced here or otherwise inspired this post:
Letters from a Stoic— Seneca
Meditations— Marcus Aurelius
Enchiridion— Epictetus
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Albums that were referenced here or otherwise inspired this post:
Cornell 5/8/77 — Grateful Dead
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I’m writing these for fun and hopefully to make a few new connections along the way. I can also be reached on twitter at @_NicT_.
For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.
