When a man exceeds his Biblical allotment
of three score and ten years, he tends to become ever more introspective,
especially around the time of each succeeding birthday. I celebrated my 78th year on this
planet several months ago and, among other things, gave some deep thought to
the question of why I run, why I have run for the past thirty-five years and
why I intend to run for at least the next 15.
As it happens, the sport has helped me physically. That's almost a given. I am still running marathons and expect to be the oldest person ever to qualify for and finish both the New York and Boston marathons in consecutive years (2012 & 2013). Above and beyond that, running has also made me mentally stronger and
has pointed me in the direction of precepts, values and skills that are
extremely important to me. That’s why I would
argue that if you stick with running -- consistently rather than sporadically and
for years instead of months -- it will help you become a more caring spouse and
parent, a more effective business manager or professional, and generally a better
person to be around.
But let's backtrack for a moment and first consider the physical benefits. Serious
runners eat better than most Canadians.
They work at getting at least seven hours of sleep a night. They drink less than most, smoke not at all –
and they decided a long time ago that a jog in the park was a better way to
ease stress than a couple of pills from a Prozac bottle.
It’s habits like these, much more than simply placing one foot in front
of another, that enable runners, among
other things, to dramatically reduce excess body fat – which, truth be told, is
far more important than simply shedding pounds.
According to author Matt Fitzgerald, in
his new book called Racing Weight, an
elite distance runner has average body fat equal to 7.3% of total weight if
he’s a male, and 12.4% if she’s a female.
The comparable numbers for the general population are at least twice as
high -- 19.0% and 23.1%, respectively.
This is an important consideration in a society like ours, where for the
first time in history, obesity has become responsible for more deaths than
malnutrition.
Then, too, the lifestyle of a runner, not
just the number of kilometers she runs, has also put running front and center
in the battle against ageing. A Stanford
University study, conducted over a period of 25 years and involving about a
thousand people who were in their mid-fifties when it began in 1984, reported
that the death rate among the approximately 500 runners in the study was less than
half that of the non-runners (15% vs. 35%).
Perhaps even more important, because it speaks so eloquently to the
quality of life, was the study’s finding that the onset of disabilities among
runners trailed that of non-runners by fully 16 years. Think about that for a moment: more than a
decade and a half of living without a cane, a walker, a wheel chair or that
most abominable of contraptions, a motorized scooter. Awesome!
Only the close-minded would still claim, as
many in the medical profession did in the eighties and a few still do today,
that running’s impact on the body would create a host of physical problems for
older runners, in the form of hip and knee replacements, back surgeries and the
like. The Stanford researchers found no
discernible difference in the number of such medical procedures between runners
and non-runners during the 25-year period covered by the study.
As significant as the physical benefits of
running is the unique place it occupies as a metaphor for life.
Please appreciate, for starters, that the
single most fundamental tenet of exercise physiology is the principle of stress
and adaptation. Hard workouts break
down muscle cells and tissue as a prelude to a recovery process during which
the body mends itself and grows stronger.
Thus we become better runners only when we push beyond our comfort level
and confront the pain involved in such an effort. So too in life. We grow as human beings only when we move
outside our comfort zone. If we insist
on staying within it, if we are content to lead a limited-risk, limited-reward
existence, we will rarely do anything special as we make our way in the world.
Also, in running we compete only against
ourselves. Each time we race, we look
to do better than we did the last time.
It’s as simple as that. Beating
other runners is rarely a consideration.
We simply don’t think in terms of getting ahead at the expense of
others. Our motivation comes from the
personal progress that we track from week to week, month to month. This conscious push from within is rarely
found outside of running or other athletic endeavors. So imagine how exceptional we become when we
make it an integral part of the person we are in everything we do.
And finally, veteran runners learn early on
to say goodbye to giving up. We enter a
race to finish it. Barring injury,
nothing less is acceptable. In life,
then, running teaches us to finish what we start – to set tough goals and
achieve them, then set tougher goals and achieve them as well. At the end of the day, isn’t that what
success is all about? Is it not true
that a life without meaningful goals is a life hardly worth living?
Coach Stephen
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