Over the past week or so, I’ve been reading John Bingham’s “The Courage to Start.” This book is essentially a guide to incorporating running into your lifestyle, and it’s very, very good. Today, I want to share a passage that really resonated with me.
This bit comes from the Introduction, and it addresses what it takes to become a runner. As Bingham likes to say, “adult-onset” athletes are made, not born. You just have to decide to do it.
Running, like living, is alternately easy and hard, good and bad, exciting and boring. It is made up of long periods of dreadful sameness interrupted by moments of pure exhilaration. The big difference between running and life is that runners can choose their moments of exhilaration.
Those moment are available to us every time we put on our running shoes. The highs and lows of a lifetime can be experienced in a single run or race. From anticipation to letdown, from abject terror to unbridled happiness, the emotions of living are there at every foot strike.
Runners may not be any more honest than the rest of the population, but I think they are. You can pretend to be smart or wealthy. You can rent a lifestyle for a week. For a few hours or a few days, you can deceive those around you, and for awhile, yourself.
But as a runner, you have to face the truth about yourself on a regular basis, and it makes you more honest. You can’t pretend to be faster than you are. You can’t pretend to be better prepared than you are. You cannot pretend to be a runner, you actually have to run.
In the end, being a runner is no more complicated than that. To be a runner, you simply have to run. It’s not enough to dream about being a runner. It’s not enough to plan on being a runner. Sooner or later, you have to run.
And if you run, you are a runner. It doesn’t matter how fast or how far. It doesn’t matter if today is your first day, or if you’ve been running for twenty years. There is not test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run.
If you’re looking for inspiration, I highly recommend “The Courage to Start.”
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