Footfalls - October 2013

He saw the shadow of an Average Man
Attempting the exceptional, and ran.
W.H. Auden

I have a vision of a visitor arriving in Toronto this weekend from a distant war-torn country. As his host drives him into town, their trip is temporarily interrupted by a marathon race and they must stop to let the runners pass. The perplexed visitor turns to his host and asks, “What are they running away from?”

 

I am one of those marathon runners and I have been asked similar questions. Why do I do it? What am I fleeing? The curiosity and cynicism is logical; we runners have been described as compulsive personality types, weight-obsessed and prone to alcoholism.  The average marathon field might be thought to contain a fair number of unbalanced, anorexic drunks trying to outdistance their own neuroses.

 

I am not an elite athlete; I neither win nor lose the race. I run near the back of the pack, with aging executives and heavy-hipped women in long white T-shirts. The folks running near me are there to go the distance certainly, but they are challenging themselves only; the winners have long since finished.

 

A marathon is 42.2 kilometres long. Some of these kilometres can be uncomfortable. To actually want to run such a distance can be puzzling to those whose hobbies are less exacting. There is no immediate gratification in pounding each one of your feet into the street pavement 21,000 times over a period of four hours or so.

 

Some of my friends wonder why I spend so much time and energy on a pursuit that  causes such apparent anguish among its practitioners - more so than, say, shopping for antiques on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  Why do I run so far?

 

Is it because I want to feel superior to my sedentary friends in the same way that the aviator feels superior to earthbound mortals? Maybe I achieve a certain private smugness in listening patiently to someone tell me about the new vibrating Barca Lounger they’ve just had delivered while I am cooling down my tingling quadriceps muscles after a 20K training run. Is it self-satisfaction I crave?

 

Am I fleeing our pervasive modern technology by attempting to rediscover something primal, more basic? Running is after all something that people have been doing naturally since our species first walked upright. Am I paying homage to my hunter-gather ancestors as I run through my own urban jungle? There could be something in this, although the theory is discredited somewhat by the presence of a computerized timing chip laced to my shoe, beaming my progress to my wife’s I-Phone as she waits at the finish line.

 

Am I looking for the kind of challenge that is disappearing from my everyday existence?  Not many of us in the cities go off into the grasslands to hunt down our dinners these days. We do not have to cope with Bubonic Plague, sabre-tooth tigers or marauding bands of Vikings. We are part of a society that is transfixed by televised reality stories of dysfunctional losers all trying to claw and backstab their way to fifteen minutes of fame and a cash prize. Are some of us looking to endurance sports as a way to become real survivors in our own lives?

 

Several years ago a running shoe company ran an ad that suggested we runners were actually fleeing old age itself - as if that were possible - and that we would succeed if we bought their product and Just Did It. Did this sell any shoes? I hope not.

 

Popular lore holds that we run for cardiac fitness, weight control, or to find inner peace in an age of anxiety. In my mind, all of these things are a by-product of running, not a goal. No weight loss agenda will carry you through a three-hour run in the blistering heat. People speak of a “runner’s high”. These people are mostly non-runners. I have seldom been high in the final miles of a marathon; sore yes, high no.

 

But if you were a runner you would know this:

At one point in a long distance race, you will come to a place where all conversation ceases, and there is only the sound of rubber soles hitting the pavement and of runners evenly breathing. The people around you are deep in their own thoughts, alone with their discomfort or determination, with their dreams or despair. This is a time of transcendental solitude, when no external source - no self-help book, no friendly volunteers, no supportive coaching – can get you to the finish line. You are locked away in negotiation with your abilities and your limitations. It is an elemental moment that is redefined each time your protesting feet hit the ground.

 

About three-quarters of the way through a marathon, the fuel in your muscles is nearly depleted and you are literally running on empty. No one is quite sure what powers you through the last 10K, but this much I believe: you have had the courage to attempt just a little bit more than you thought you were capable of. You challenged yourself – mind and body - to try to do more today than you did yesterday. And by accepting this challenge, you have become extraordinary.

 

In answer to our foreign visitor’s question: we marathoners are running away, but not from old age or chubby thighs or the stresses of the world. We are running from the shadow of the average man, from the blandness of spiritual indifference, and ultimately we are running out of mere being and into betterness. We run in order to demand something supernal of our bodies and our souls, and to rejoice when we feel them respond.