A Renewed Dedication

I'm turning sixty years old this year and I've decided to change things up a little. I've always been an athlete. I've played basketball, actually all the team sports, with varied success. I've played alot of tennis, very much an individual event, and I enjoyed it. Lifting weights gives you a great pump and a feeling of accomplishment but it is only a means to an end. There is no reason to lift weights just to lift unless it equates to a sports use. At least not for me....I'll never compete in it.  But I've always loved to run. More than anything, I love to run.

I've been asked why a million times, as we all have, and I think I finally know why. I actually know, at the bottom line level, what I like about the sport of running. It is the means to an end and the end itself. And not many things can say that. Let me explain.

I love the self locomotion of running. There is something about covering ground using nothing but your own power that lifts me. It is an awareness that I don't need a devise to get me home or to the store or for a trip around the neighborhood. You simply put on your shoes and go. Once I got a flat tire while at a strip mall a few miles from my house. I discovered that I didn't have a tire tool and was standing there staring at the car. I was wearing cargo shorts, a t-shirt and river sandals and it occurred to me. Run home and get a tire tool. I ran easily for the few miles to my house, grabbed the tire tool and ran back. I didn't even think to call my wife and sit in the heat waiting for her to figure out what a tire tool looked like and bring it to me. I ran and got it.

I also figured out that you can run for simply the benefits of health. And along the way you get better at it and if you decide to race, the fun and healthy sport that you have so enjoyed just so happened to get you in shape for a sport exactly like you were doing for fun. Think of that. You lift weights to play football or basketball, rarely to actually compete in weight lifting. But you run simply to run. Fast or slow, it doesn't matter. You run to run, alone or with a fast pack with a tag pinned to your chest, it's all the same. You just might dress better on race day.

So I have committed myself to run races this year that I turn sixty. I committed myself to a training schedule, got my Nike+ app for my phone and started my blog. I have decided that knowing that I love to run, I'm gonna run.