[Tuesday: 3.4 miles; today: none yet]
I started jogging toward the end of my college years. I guess it would have been about 1984(?). And I have been at it more-or-less ever since. I suspect there have been a few weeks go by that I didn’t get out at least once. But not very many. I said “jogging” above because I am slow and have a body not really configured for speed (long torso, short legs, kind of stout).
My older brother was a runner before me. I have never run with him that I remember. But I think his example kind of opened me to the idea.
About 4 years ago my wife was challenged by someone to start a “couch to 5k” program, to run an upcoming 5k race. She did that. And then she went on to do 10k, half marathon, marathon and 50k races. She is really into running now, way beyond anything I ever did.
I did a few races with her at the beginning but now she is much more into racing than I am.
And our son has recently started to run quite a bit also.
He invited me over on Tuesday evening and we ran together around the North Farm at Mississippi State. There is a gravel road loop that makes 3.4 miles according to his Garmin GPS. He runs quite a bit faster than I do and he had to slow down to accommodate. I was running faster than my normal pace. We found a workable middle ground.
He has a half marathon scheduled for early 2016.
I don’t think there is anything magical about it. Running has both exercise and meditative benefits. If you run for an hour, that gives your mind a chance to unwind, you get exercise endorphins and you get muscle/skeletal development. Usually there’s an outdoors/fresh air aspect to it also.
There can be dangers, but they seem small compared to other activities with similar benefits. You can fall down, you can injure yourself through overuse or poor form (it is a repetitive activity), and you can get hit by a car or cyclist. There’s no water to drown in, like with swimming or rowing. There’s no parachute to fail or bicycle to crash. Concussion risks are low compared to interpersonal contact sports.
Every once in awhile someone will have a heart attack during a marathon or something. That is usually a surprise since people running a marathon have probably already run 10 times that much in training. There was even a nationally ranked runner who keeled over at a race. Having run for years, why then? Blaming it on running would be like having a heart attack in the bathtub and blaming it on hot water.
And non-runners always point to Jim Fixx who wrote about the benefits of running and then died young. The lesson there is that if you are running to increase your life span it may or may not work.
But if you enjoy it, there’s probably nothing about it any less healthy than other activities you could be doing. I think that’s the part that people don’t understand: it’s recreation, an activity of enjoyment, it’s fun. And it is difficult, so there is a measure of earned pride in accomplishment when things turn out well.