(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 2007.)
A regular run of
mine passes along a creekside path. On one side is a botanical garden, on the
other a fitness center.
Side-by-side
treadmills look out, through a floor-to-ceiling window, onto the creek and
garden. Both treadmills are always occupied at the time I run past their users’
window to the outside world.
The treadmillers
might be more fit than I am (and surely are younger, better dressed and better
groomed). But I think while looking in on them that there’s far more to running
than fitness, and they’re missing almost everything but their workout.
The run that
touched off this column came on a springtime morning. The chilly air still
carried a bite of winter, reluctant to depart.
But the day’s
dawning came early enough now to let me see what I passed through and not just
trust it to be here. This morning exploded with the sights, sounds and smells
of the new season.
Treadmillers miss
most of this. The climate and light inside their club never change. They hear
the grinding of their machines, or the background sound of music and news. They
smell only each other or the deodorizers that mask the aromas of human effort.
I applaud the
treadmillers for their effort, which probably is greater than mine. But I wish
they would step across the plate-glass window and experience the wider world of
running outside.
Exercising
indoors, and in place, is like watching the natural world pass by through a car
window. You see it but don’t feel it. You’re apart from it, not really a part of it.
In the gym, every
day is much like every other. Outdoors, no day is quite like any other.
I’m out every day
of every week at dawn or before. I run most of those days. But even when the
day calls for a walk, I’m still out at the same hour, in the same clothes and
on the same routes, for the same length of time.
Running days never
exactly clone themselves. Conditions of weather, qualities of light, varieties
of sight and sound are forever remixing into something new. Without stepping
outside, you can’t know exactly what freshness the day holds.
UPDATE FROM 2015
This one was for
my friend Norm Lumian, who died in spring 2007. He was one of life’s
ultrarunners, running for more than 60 of his 78 years.
Post-polio
syndrome gradually took away the use of his legs. Anticipating his future, he
adopted an unusual routine in the late 1990s: a run one day and a wheelchair
session the next. No one I met on the streets and trails of Eugene appeared to
enjoy mornings more than Norm, even as the speed and scope of his runs
decreased.
The retired college professor often phoned to “grade” my columns and to
“assign” new ones. He said late in his life, “Why don’t you write sometime
about the simple pleasure of getting outside for a run each day?” Assignment
completed, Prof.
[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 two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.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, Memory Laps, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]
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