The good thing about the sport of running is that the person and be almost any shape or size. Runners can be short or tall, skinny or hefty, man or woman and young or old. It just takes the effort to put one foot in front of the other. For the benefit of exercise, the pace can be fast or slow. Running is one of those sports that almost anyone can do and reap the benefits of moving.
While the physical characteristics are one thing that makes running a good sport to try it also fits the personality of the runner. The advantage of running is that it has a tremendous variety of forms for a runner’s personality. For the runner that likes a set routine, there is a form of running for them. I had a friend that paced out a 400-yard path around his yard and ran it on a daily basis. The same path every day at the same pace. He ran a 10 minute pace so he didn’t have to count laps for three miles. He just knew when he ran for 30 minutes he had run three miles.
For a runner that likes variety in life, running can fit that personality as well. I tend to fit the variety style more. I had a three-mile route around my neighborhood, another route that included the River Walk and that trail behind the Little League Fields, and one in my neighborhood that had a stretch where I could do a little speed work for the middle mile. I had distances from the three-mile range to the 22-mile range. Looking back at some of the routes from earlier days, many can no longer be tried. A speed workout on Wonder World Drive was trying different paces between telephone poles. The first pole was a slow jog, the next a training pace, the next was a race pace, and then a sprint pace and the last pole was recovery. Today there are no poles and the two lanes are now about four or five with buildings instead of telephone poles. And lots of traffic with a faster speed limit.
