Running and the fools who partake in it

"One mile…no sweat.

Two miles…easy day.

Three miles…all right…

Four miles….that's enough…

Five miles…now who the $&^# are you???  $&^#ing Chuck Norris??"

A good day does not begin with a five-mile run.  That is a premise of which I am certain.  My justification for this statement are the following scenarios:

1.  You are running for "fun."  You have just expended large amounts of energy and placed undue amounts of stress on your joints and bones to effectively run in a giant circle.  Well done.  Your day will be filled with "runner's high," a form of misplaced self-satisfaction.  People will hate you and throw things at you.

2.  You are running from a bear or other hungry and malfeasant predator.  You have just expended large amounts of energy and chances are you are about to be eaten or brutally mauled.  This will not be a good day for you.

There are Runners, and then there are people who run.  I am a member of the latter community.  I run because I recognize the value of an appropriate amount of cardiovascular exercise, but mostly I run because the job requires it.  I am by no means a shirker of physical activity.  I fall comfortably within standards and for some reason can knock out sit-ups like a fiend.  But I hate running.  Oh, I hate it with a passion.  I hate the monotony.  I hate the pointlessness.  I hate that, by the well established laws of physics, I perform exactly no useful work when I run.  But, most pointedly, I hate Runners.

Runners are easy to distinguish.  They spend inordinate sums of money on shoes and air-wicking skin-tight clothing.  They have, without exception, nice calves.  They think paying for the privilege to run 26.2 miles is normal.  They can tell if you under-pronate just by looking at you.  They can name runners in non-Olympic years.  They invest heavily in gel packs and salt tablets and other lab-created accessories designed to prevent the body from killing itself during long-distance runs.  They subscribe to and actually read Runner's World.  They view a non-Runner as a project and will secretly slip half-marathon applications into coat pockets and desk inboxes.  They think a three-mile run is a "warm-up." 

Unfortunately I work with a large community of Runners.  So I tend to find myself in the mornings on long runs, finishing near the back of the group (but still finishing!).  Most days the Runners send a member to come find me and shout motivational things to me while I gasp and wheeze toward the finish.  Had I any strength, every one of these motivators would have suffered at least a bruised shin.

And so as I end my rant about running I would implore you to remember just one thing:  The first person who ran a marathon died.