Running Still Matters

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from October 2001.)

In the days post-September 11^th, I heard from many runners. They split about equally between those who ran anyway but felt guilty about it, and those who couldn’t bring themselves to run because it seemed suddenly unimportant, even disrespectful.

My daily run was slow to start then. But I never thought about not starting it and never felt this act trivialized the tragedy.

Running still mattered, and now more than ever. To head out anyway at a time like this wasn’t heartless or selfish; just the opposite.

I wasn’t going out to play, but to worry and to mourn. This run opened my heart to thoughts about the pain of others. No one could run away from a problem this immense.

Running lets us deal with a problem instead of avoiding it. A run can turn down the volume and slow the pace of events – away from the radio, TV, computer, car, job – and can let us stare the problem in the face.

Such runs can be wrenching, as tears and fears rise up with nothing to deflect them. This is a necessary part of healing, since letting ourselves feel our worst helps us start to feel better.

We could do the same by going for a walk or bike ride, or just sitting in a quiet room. But running is where we go in the bad times because this is a friend we know so well.

Some tragedies are national, and we all must endure them together. More often these are the personal blows that strike each of us, and we must work through them on our own: the death of someone close, the birth of a handicapped child, the end of a marriage.

My first huge loss was my father, when he was 54 and I just half that age. This hit me so hard that I couldn’t write a word about it, or anything else, for a long time.

Yet in those darkest of days I never missed a run. He was a former runner himself and a great lifelong fan of the sport, but I didn’t use the comforting line, “He would have wanted me to keep running.”

That would have been a minor truth. The bigger reason I kept running was because I needed it, and then more than ever.

Running when you’re hurting inside is important. It can’t solve the world’s problems, nor can it make your own disappear. That isn’t the purpose of a crisis-run.

What the running on those days does is let you step away from ground zero, look inside yourself, and sort through your thoughts and emotions before coming back to wrestle with the new realities. That’s why running still matters – more than ever.

UPDATE FROM 2014

Hard times followed, for me as they do for everyone. I ran through the passing of my mother and my brother (both in the same year)… through my wife’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, and my own… through the divorces of two children… through the end of a job, in my 60s, that I’d held since my 20s. But these mournful mornings were balanced by runs that celebrated great times, too numerous to recount here.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Pure Sport

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from August 2001.)

You don’t run cross-country for flat, fast courses accurate to the inch, or to set PRs. You don’t run cross-country to have every step watched, as in a track stadium, or to mix with the masses, as on the roads. You don’t run cross-country for the glory, since in U.S. schools it shares a season with King Football.

You run cross-country for the purest of reasons. You run to test yourself against other runners on whatever surface and terrain nature provides – on a course where no car can go, and where your family and fans can catch glimpses of you only by running from point to point. You run with teammates in a race where everyone’s result helps or hurts the team score.

Cross-country tests your love of running and racing for their own sake, not for PRs you might set or attention you might grab. Once you’ve fallen for the fall sport, you never stop loving it.

A large majority of my autumns have passed since I last ran a full cross-country season. My final race for Drake University was the worst. In the snowbound NCAA meet I trailed all but a few of the finishers. The pain of that race, of failing the team (by not scoring), and of ending a college career this way, soon eased.

But the fond memories of those seasons remain, and I eagerly refresh them each fall at my favorite running event of the year. It isn’t a big-city marathon or a major track meet in my hometown, but the Oregon State High School Cross-Country Championships.

Marc Bloom wrote in his magazine, The Harrier, after an emotionally overcharged Olympics, “At least we’ve got the warm and cuddly cross-country season to make us feel better.” He loves the running that high schoolers do in this season, since he has coached as well as written about them.

Marc’s first love is mine as well. The best day of the year to be a running fan in my home state is the first Saturday in November. All sizes of high schools run their state meet on the same course, in six races lasting as long in total as my slowest marathon.

This is a gathering of kids who often are ignored or misunderstood at their own schools during King Football season, and where the runners outnumber the fans at most of their meets. Now they come together with runners like themselves to be appreciated for all they do.

Oregon’s state-meet crowd is large by cross-country standards. That’s because each runner brings along an average of two family members and friends. The viewers care about that runner’s race almost as much as the runner does, and they dash about the course to grab glimpses of their special athlete.

This is a feel-good meet to watch, if not to run. These runners all seem to start at a dead sprint, and pay later with pain.

Standing close to the course, I feel some of what they feel at an age when feelings run to extremes. I hurt for those who think they’ll never recover from an imagined failure. And I celebrate with the winning individuals and teams who think they’ve conquered the world.

If you ever ran cross-country and want to renew those memories, or if you want to see what you missed by not being a young runner on a team, go to a high school cross-country race. These kids will leave you feeling good about the sport’s future as well as their own. They’ll show you that competitive running in its purest form is still in great shape.

UPDATE FROM 2014

Even while coaching young runners in recent years, I’ve never guided any through a cross-country season. Maybe that’s just as well, because my teams might not have succeeded in the way that running success is usually measured.

I would have made this season a respite from the time obsessions of road and track racing. Cross-country distances would have been odd and approximate. We would have marked no miles and shouted no splits.

The home course would have been hilly, rough, sometimes muddy and always slow. Competition would have been pure – runner against runner and against the elements, not the clock.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Honoring Endurance

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from May 2001.)

Running a marathon is too big an effort to keep to ourselves. Individually we often dedicate our race to someone important to us, then our thoughts of that someone help keep us moving when the miles grow long.

A marathon inaugurated this spring took this spirit of sharing to a new high. The Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon commemorated a single event, and everyone ran to honor 168 people.

That number died on April 19, 1995, in the worst terrorist act in U.S. history. Hundreds more were injured in the bombing, and uncounted thousands were scarred by it.

Ground zero of that blast was the Murrah Federal Building. Now resting in its former footprint is the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is all the more moving for its simplicity.

A reflecting pool replaced the street that once passed in front of the building. The Memorial's centerpiece is a set of 168 empty chairs.

This spot was dedicated on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy. Soon afterward a pair of local runners, Thomas Hill and Chet Collier, began planning the marathon that would begin in the sixth post-tragedy April. They brought in Dot Hensley as race director.

“From the beginning,” they wrote in the race program, “our vision was to honor the dead and to join hands with the living in striving for a better, healthier and safer future.”

The noblest of sentiments. But the hard, practical reality was that the organizers had less than a year to pull together a marathon and to make it a worthy tribute.

The event touched the spirit of sharing in runners. More than 4000 of them – about equally divided between marathoners and two-person or four-person relay teams – came to Oklahoma City from 35 states and several countries.

Runners started at the Memorial, near enough to see these words etched into a wall: “We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity.”

Oklahoma City has endured – and continues to endure – its worst nightmare. An endurance event is a fitting tribute, but the symbolic connection is imperfect.

Thomas Hill said of the marathon, “It’s a little painful, but you get over it. The pain fades, and you’re left with the joy.”

A marathon ends within a few hours. Recovery for the families of bombing victims is much slower, and never to be complete.

Lining the race course were banners honoring the 168. “When I see the names on the banners,” said Chet Collier before running the marathon, “I’ll realize the suffering I’m going through is nothing – nothing – compared to what the families went through.”

Other runners felt the same. Runner’s World writer Hal Higdon, in town to speak at the marathon, visited the Memorial after the race.

“As my wife Rose and I left the museum,” said Hal, “we walked past the fence where visitors leave mementos. Dozens of runners had left behind their race numbers.” Hal had earlier left his own tribute.

The enduring of the April 1995 tragedy goes on in Oklahoma City. But so does the healing, in part through events like the Memorial Marathon.

Carla Naylor completed her first marathon here. She ran it in honor of her daughter, Madison.

She was a baby the day of the blast, housed in a nearby day-care center that was badly damaged. Madison survived with minor injuries and, fortunately, with no memory of that day. Now six years old, she ran across the marathon finish line holding her mother’s hand.

UPDATE FROM 2014

This piece appeared less than four months before terrorists struck harder and at greater cost in New York, DC and Pennsylvania. Twelve years later, in Boston, even a running event itself became the target of violence – making more memorials necessary.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Marathon Week

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from August 2000.)

As a frequent flier to marathons, I inevitably bump into megamarathoners. They fly anywhere and everywhere to add another race to their total.

In Edmonton this summer my path again crossed that of Peter Butler. He has traveled from his home in St. Paul to run “something over 400” marathons. On my last trip to Canada I met Wally Herman, who has marathoned more than 500 times.

They take after Sy Mah and Norm Frank in this quest. Mah’s lifetime count of marathons, 524, was thought to be unbreakable until Frank broke it a few years ago.

At yet another Canadian marathon a few years ago I met Gordon Hartshorn. He had started his turn-of-the-century celebration early by trying to run marathons 200 weeks in a row by the year 2000 – all while dealing with prostate cancer. The illness ended his streak at 74 weeks and took his life in 1998.

This piece remembers him. He inspired the thoughts herein.

When we last talked at the Canadian Rockies Marathon in Canmore, Alberta, I mentioned in passing my own longtime marathon-a-week habit. His eyes widened – until I added, “... as a weekly total, that is.”

My weeks lined up much differently than Gordon’s. He did little else but rest up and travel between races. This is how most megamarathoners do it.

I like to run too much to do it only a few days a week. And I’m not tough enough to go the weekend distances that Gordon did.

Only twice have I even run two marathons in as many weeks. Now I’m lucky to put in two a year. But I’ve long taken weekly marathons the easy way – on the installment plan.

Miles don’t count with me. I never check them, choosing instead to keep score by time periods.

For much of my running life I’ve totaled 3½ to four hours a week. That’s marathon time, more or less.

(It was more in the long-gone days when I routinely averaged eight-minute training miles. Today, while taking at least a minute longer to complete each mile, my total probably falls slightly under a marathon. But who’s checking?)

My weekly running settled at marathon-like distance 20 years ago. Only the daily doses have changed since then, not the time-honored weekly total.

Marathon-a-week was what I ran in the gray days of nothing longer or shorter than a half-hour, never taking a day off and always totaling 3½ hours. Marathon-a-week was still the total during my brief flirtation with running every other day for an hour at a time. Marathon-a-week was my total while running by three-day cycles – long one day, faster the next and rest the third.

Marathon-a-week has been my practice since returning to more frequent running, usually six days a week with one longer day before the day off. This total even holds steady on the rare occasions when I attempt a true marathon and the race itself is my only run that week.

Few of us are superpeople who can run a marathon every weekend. We don’t have the legs or drive – or the travel budget – for it.

But the marathon spread across the full week is a nice substitute when the real thing is out of reach. Gordon Hartshorn would approve.

UPDATE FROM 2014

The length, in time, of my average day's activity has gone up as the pace has slowed since writing this piece. A marathon would take longer to finish now, but I still total marathon time in a good week – the easy way.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]