Running and Self-Aggrandizement

I've noticed that everywhere I look, people are out to make themselves feel better, bigger, smarter, healthier, and faster than others. They seem to need a sense of their uniqueness, and they promote their abilities and downplay those of others in order to do this. I see this on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and every other social media outlet.  Images of people running across steep mountain tops state things like "The miracle isn't that I finished, but that I started" or "Always earned, never given" (race medals and bibs) or "people ask why I run. It's something only those select few will understand...".

Come on! Lots of people run. Millions of people run. We are not a select group of heroes doing something selfless. Running is one of the most selfish things we do. It's purely about ourselves. I struggled with this at first, doing something so selfish that seemed to benefit no one else. But I have come to accept the selfish side of me after so many years of being decidedly unselfish.

Today, I feel l deserve the time I spend everyday communing with nature, talking to myself, listening to my body. I used to try to justify this to myself or attempt to  find ways to offset it.  I thought that if I ran for charitable causes it would at least be an activity I did for a higher purpose. I felt terrible doing this solely for me. My life hadn't been about me for such a long time that I just couldn't cope with the idea of being self-centered.

But I guess other people don't have a problem with this. Not only do they do these selfish acts of self-improvement, they then feel the need to point it out to the world and make themselves stand out. They say things like 'I ran 4 miles this morning. How many 50 year olds can do this?"

Well, a lot of 50 year olds can and do run 4 miles. It's not a miraculous thing, but more importantly why is it necessary for you to be unique in this? I know that I am a middle of the pack runner. In large races, I come in dead center of my age group of 40-45 females. I am not particularly fast nor am I particularly slow. Lots of women my age run, and 50% percent of those women run faster than me. There is nothing to brag about here.

Do I want to set myself apart from the pack? Sometimes, but not often.  I don't feel a need to draw attention to myself. I don't need to be the fastest, sexiest, funniest, or any other superlative, in the race. I just need and want to run. I want to finish. I would like to finish faster than I did the last time I ran the distance. If I don't, I won't belittle myself. I will just spend more time tweaking my running plans and trying new exercises or breathing patterns.

I have been running for about 2 years now, not a long time especially for someone my age.  I'm still a beginner at this. Maybe I just don't understand the runner mentality. Or maybe I am just being inundated by media and I need to tune it out. 

My late mother was a runner. She was healthy, fit, super conscious of her diet, her weight, and her appearance. Her vanity killed her in the end, at the age of 51. So from her I have learned that this cannot be about maintaining my appearance. In fact, running doesn't seem to be making me more attractive. I now have mild varicose veins thanks to running. I have lost weight, yes, but my distance running has caused my butt to go flat, like a pancake. I don't focus as much time on upper body work, so my arms are not as toned as they used to be. I spend my spare time running, not chiseling my features. Maybe that is wrong, but I have only so much time to spend on exercise and I have to be choosy. Would I rather have chiseled shoulders or would I rather spend time stretching to avoid injury? Stretching, thank you.

But I have learned some kind and good things from my mother the runner. Whenever she saw someone, anyone, running down the road, she felt an unrestrainable need to hoot and holler her congratulations to them.  She would honk her horn, smile and wave as she drove by them, probably scaring the poor person. She felt glee seeing someone else plodding away down the road. She knew something and was communing with them in some way that I did not understand back then. I wasn't a runner then. I just thought my mom was a nut case and I pleaded for her to stop making such a fuss while scaring the neighborhood runners. She waved me off.  I didn't understand and she knew I did't understand. She didn't judge me for that though. She just knew that she was a part of an unformed, diaphanous club that had a universal understanding. 

Running is hard. Running is fun. Running is meditative. Running makes you feel fantastic. Running makes you feel spent. Running is something in our human genetic composition that we do not understand. We no longer need to run to catch our food. But we cannot stop running. We're not heroes because we run. We're just running to get in touch with some nameless, ageless need to put one foot in front of the other, over and over again.