"Foreknowledge of human folly never saves us from its consequences"
-- Herodotus --
So today I signed up for the Bayshore Half Marathon that won’t take place for six months. It was the first day possible to sign up for this footrace. Not only that, online registration is not open until December 1. To register today you had to physically go to a Running Fit store in Traverse City, fill out a paper entry form, and pay in cash or by check. No credit cards for early registration. I was telling myself that the reason I’m doing this today is because last year online registration met its cap of 2300 runners in less than 24 hours. And that is part of it — but not all of it.
I started out running a lot of years — and one knee surgery — ago with shorter distance races never thinking it would be humanly possible for me to run any farther than a 10K race. Kind of like the days of early auto racing (Barney Oldfield) when they thought your eardrums would explode if you went faster than 60 miles per hour. They eventually found out that wasn’t true and I did too. Over the past 35+ years I’ve run lots of different race distances including 18 half marathons and a couple marathons. Not all of them have been pretty. And I get asked fairly often why I keep running and my pat answer is, “So I don’t weigh 300 pounds.” And that is part of it too — but not all of it.
I used to play golf every Thursday night with a multi-generational bunch. One old boy was a heavy smoker who had lost his wife to the same pernicious habit. He, himself, had had more than one heart attack and had been diagnosed with cancer but continued his obsession with cigarettes. One evening as we were all sitting in the clubhouse another member of our group mustered the courage to ask this fellow the obvious question the rest of us head-shakers couldn’t bear to ask. “Leroy, you lost Ruth because of those things, you’ve had two heart attacks, and you’ve been diagnosed with cancer. Why do you keep smoking?” — to which Leroy indignantly replied —“Because I like it, God damn it!” Yup, he died a short time later.
Just last month as I was driving 200 miles round-trip to Mackinaw City to catch a ferry to Mackinac Island to run a half marathon I wasn’t in shape for, sporting a painful leg injury and nursing a sinus infection, I wondered to myself — “What were you thinking?” You’re spending money on registration, fuel, ferry tickets, and food to run a race that you have no hope of even placing in your age group, while jeopardizing your health even further, and with the distinct possibility you may not finish thereby subjecting yourself to the humiliating “Walk of Shame.” Why are you running? And even with the mellifluous voice of reason encouraging me to turn around, I told myself “It’s the last race of the season, I paid for it, and I’m gonna run it.” Again, part of the reason — but not all of it.
Which brings me back to today and the seemingly ridiculous notion to pay $80 to register for a race that won’t be run until May 26, 2012. I’m not a good runner. I’ve never won a race. I’ve never even finished first in my age group. And yet just because my race season ended with the Great Turtle Half Marathon, that doesn’t mean my running stops. I run year round in rain and snow, with injuries and illnesses, and without regard to where I might finish in the next race. So I think the real answer to why I keep running is obvious. “Because I like it, God damn it!”
