What drives a runner? - A medium distance runner's version

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

In this day and age, when you have vehicles which will take you from place to place, the whole point of running seems to be lost a little. Earlier, Man used to run to catch food and avoid becoming food.

He used to run for something and run away from something. That theme is true today too, albeit in a different way.

My alarm went off at 5 this morning. I turned around and switched it off. Then I tossed about in bed, contemplating if I should wake up or not. Another 5 minutes, I told myself, and went back to sleep. 5 minutes seemed fair. My eyes opened next at 7 am. It was raining outside. What’s the point, I asked myself. Forget the run today, tomorrow will be another day. I tried to go back to sleep but my mind just wouldn’t let me then. I got out of bed, put on my tracks and my running shoes, plugged my I-pod in and headed outside for a run. My day had barely even begun, but truth be told, I knew that was going to be the hardest decision I made today. Phew! At least that’s over and done with!

While running today, I was thinking about all the years that had gone by when I wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully at night if I hadn’t run. I needed to run to survive. I needed to compete. I needed to push myself. I needed to feel the pain, the struggle. I loved the hard work and the complete lack of social life that came with being a sportsperson. But that was then, and this is now.

So why do we run? What is it that makes our mind willing to put our body through all that exhaustion? What exactly is the “joy of running”? Ask any marathon runner if they enjoy competing at a marathon, I’m sure they’d be lying if they said they enjoyed all 42.7 kms of it.

(Sid: Now wait a minute…Ok the last 7 kms were hellish. I said to myself, never again. But even as I said it, I admitted to myself that I would be doing it again. It’s like childbirth, not gone through for fun but for the results.)

The dictionary definition of ‘to enjoy’ implies receiving pleasure or satisfaction from something. Sure, there is nothing greater than the satisfaction one receives from completing a marathon, but that enjoyment is only felt once the race is over. And that’s what we all run after.

What do you run towards? – sense of satisfaction, sense of pride, mind takes over body and you realize how little you thought of yourself and how much more you are capable of doing. Run towards more than just the finish line. Run towards a dream, a goal. People run for social causes, in order to keep fit, to win medals, to make a living, etc. But in my opinion, you should only run for yourself. Run because it makes you happy, run because you want to experience that feeling of having conquered your inhibitions, your pain and everything else that was coming in the way of you and your goals. Run because you enjoy it.

Run for you.

(Written by Zeba Changi with inputs from Siddarth Sharma)