I fell off the chuckwagon in the last week of December and got sidetracked on the holiday lazy train. I ran 3 days during that week leading up to Christmas, totaling only 14 miles. There were also two gentle cross country skis (classic technique, first time on skis this winter) in that time, but I ended up taking 12 days off from running. Interestingly, I received a book from a friend as a gift and it’s been like manna from heaven, inspiring me to run like no words ever have before. The book is “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall and in many ways encapsulates the joy and vitality I’ve encountered over the years through running. So, here it is 2010 and I’m more excited about running than I have been in a long time. There’s lots of snow on the ground and the trails around here are more suited for skiing than running, but I’m going to do both for awhile anyway. I’m also figuring on adjusting my diet and the training itself to better adapt myself for long distance running. After all, I’m coming to believe that we as a species really were born to run. Despite all the time I spend in front of this computer for work and recreation, I want more of my efforts to aim toward running— that beautiful expression of a unified body and mind, surging forward!
Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors’ backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you’d ever be hassled for going too fast.
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightnining bolts through the bottom and middle—behold, the Running Man. (Born to Run, pg. 92)
