This is How We Run: For the Love of Running

I run because I'm a glutton for punishment. Because if I'm comfortable in life, I have to make myself uncomfortable. I have to be digging out of something or digging deep for something else. I like running trails for all the other reasons runners like to run: solitude, freedom from cell phones and computers and stop lights and coffee shops, and cars, and politics and so on, exploring, adventure, camaraderie. I run to push my body to the breaking point and beyond, just to get up and do it again. I love trail/ultra running because in the woods or desert, I can hear my body, my heart beating, my chest rising. I can feel my blood pumping and taste mud and trees and clean air. I can see a sunrise or sunset, that no one else sees. You can't get that on a three mile run in the park. I'm not the most eloquent or entertaining writer so I will steel a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. I believe this says it all:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Every time I run a race or get off the couch to do a long run I feel as though I might actually be living up to Mr. Roosevelt's "man in the Arena." Running allows me to be a participant in life not a spectator.

Oh and by the way, a big thank you to trailandultrarunning.com and Ultimate Direction for the inspiration and motivation to reflect on why I love running and the people who support all of us running fools.