I was visiting a festival in northeast Texas this last week. There is a park and playground across the street from my house that kids play on. The one thing that caught my attention was it seems almost every kid tried to climb up to the highest level of the slide and playscape. Some of the kids were barely over a year old (it looked like) and whether it was on the stairs or on a monkey bar ladder, they were climbing up. I began to wonder how old, or what stage of life, do we start to feel a fear of height and falling. I imagine kids learn to fear height after falling off something a few times. As we get older there is a learning process called common sense that tells you that at a high height you need to be careful. It reminded me of the first time I jumped or dove off a 10-meter diving platform. At over 30 feet in the air the pool down below looks about the size of a donut. I knew that any entry that wasn’t feet or head first was going to hurt. Water is very hard when you land on your stomach or back, and it stings a bit too. I was told that you need to make a fist with your hands and keep them in front of your head when you hit the water. The splash from the hands creates an opening for the head to fit through. If the hands are apart and you hit the water with the top of your head it is going to hurt.
Thinking of how the development of fear or discomfort had me thinking about the activity or sport of running. No matter how you look at your first attempt at running, it is hard and often uncomfortable. Running isn’t like a sport or game where it is fun to play. Watching a basketball go through the hoop, hitting a tennis ball or volleyball over the net, or hitting a softball out into the field is a reward for your efforts. But after your first run of two miles, you are breathing hard, your legs hurt, and there is no tangible reward like hitting a golf ball straight down the fairway. You can say that you ran two miles, but after the run there are no points on the score board and nothing has changed.
At what point does running become a fun sport and an almost addiction for the body? At what point will a runner drive over a 100-miles to run 3.1 miles and pay a hefty entry fee for a tee shirt? At what point will a runner think running 26.2 miles in a marathon is fun? When did the change from that first uncomfortable two-mile run become an almost mandatory part of the day.
I was a weight lifter primarily, and my partner and I would run one mile after the workout because it was a mandatory part of getting fit. There was no reward like lifting a new record in weight lifting and feeling the muscles all pumped up. It was just a mandatory part of the workout. The first time we decided to stretch that one mile run to three miles, we untied and retied our shoes at the half way point so we could run the second half of the three miles. It wasn’t as fun as the one-mile jog that we usually did.
As I began to run more and lengthened the distance that I ran, running became fun. I enjoyed the feeling of how my entire body felt. There is a feeling called a “runners high” that on some runs you feel like you are not even touching the ground. It only happens on a few occasions during a run but it is an amazing feeling to experience when it does occur. The point in running where you look forward to getting together with some other running friends and go for a 20-mile run while training for a marathon is something that a runner thinks about all week. The most fun runs I remember was on a Sunday when a group of runners would meet to run to Wimberley across the Freeman Ranch for 13 miles to run on the dirt road, down the switchbacks, across the river, and stop at the Cypress Creek Café for a big cinnamon roll as our reward.
Moe Johnson Running with Moe
