The world of the runner is full of gurus and shamans. Despite their implied promises and the advice of cardiologists, orthopods, podiatrists and urologists, we are all going to slow down as we age, probably suffer injuries which take longer to heal, and eventually we will meet the grim reaper.
We seek salves, punctures, massages, pills, and magic elixirs that would guarantee us more time on the road. But, like our sedentary sisters and brothers, we are flesh and bone, blood and sinew, skin, hair and teeth. All the characteristics that propel us down the road, propel us ever surely toward the day when we must acknowledge that our watches are accurate and we have lost some seconds, perhaps even minutes, from our training and racing paces.
Our slower resting pulse rate, the pureness of our pores, our superior oxygen efficiency, although promoting greater sense of well being, will not alter the fact that we are slowing with age. True, we may think we look better, we may be certain we feel better, we may even reason that we think better .... but, mostly, .... we dazzle ourselves and our friends with claims which are, at best, subjective.
Each of my own daily runs reminds me of my sixty and three years of human frailty. The aching Achilles' tendon in my right lower extremity, the rebelling plantar fascia in the left, an old overstretched calf muscle, an ancient pulled groin, all awaken me each time I run to an awareness of the mortal being that I am. As I stumble about like a spastic sloth during the first mile or two of every run, I wonder why I am not arrested for public drunkenness. But, as my frame and attached parts warm to the task, and my mind drifts toward the elusive "runner's high," my integrated wholeness comes together. I, once again, shift from the staggering old guy I seem to have become, toward the smooth machine of youth that my primal self knows I am. The pace quickens as the pain decreases and I become at first a loping cat and then a swift gazelle as I glide over the street that, only moments ago, was the pounding enemy.
Halfway through my eight miler I am at one with nature. I fit, somehow, into the created order of all things. As I reach the open desert course, where my running trail often takes me, it becomes the rolling tundra, the savannah, the mountain pass, the desert vastness of milleniums ago. The small animals and birds are my relatives. The arroyo I cross becomes the dry river bed of some long forgotten time and the ancient junipers wave their centuries of growth to remind me of my kinship with ages past. In some unexplainable way, the sky seems bluer and the crisp air brings all senses into total alertness. For a moment .... I feel immortal.
In the last few minutes of my run, as I pass the house of my good neighbor, I see him sitting in his recliner, nursing a beer and peering out at me over his roll of excess fat. I acknowledge that fate may make him my pallbearer .... but, in truth, he will never experience the totality of life that I experience each day that I run. For if I have run today, I have truly lived. I tuck myself into bed knowing I am a physically and mentally superior being. I am not shaken from that faith until the morrow .... when I creak and groan, drag my moribund self from my bed, and stumble on ruined legs to stoop beneath a hot shower until I am able, at last, to stand erect. In half an hour I no longer limp and whimper and I begin to plan for the next run. For, you see, on the next run I will fleetingly regain my eternal self.
Foolishness? Oh yes! But, in the momentary wholeness, what does the foolishness matter?
-Jay Pierson