“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, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle–behold, the Running Man. Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love–everything we sentimentally call our ‘passions’ and ‘desires’ it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.”

Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

I’ve run for as long as I can remember. At first, I ran as all children do: I ran to avoid being tagged; I ran to find the best hiding space; I ran after balls and away from balls and towards the dinner table. There were races, of course. Spur of the moment contests of speed in the neighborhood through a great-many front yards, or whistle-start sprints as part of gym class, or races to be first in line for the ice cream truck. When my brother and I were quite young Dad entered us in the Children’s One Mile Run as part of the Revco Marathon event in downtown Cleveland. The main thing I remember was that it finished in a mad dash through the Higbee’s department store. There were balloons down the straight-away in the cosmetics department, and when we crossed the finish line we received a ticket redeemable for an ice cream sundae. No training is required for the races of children. There exists no fear of not making the distance. Running is as much a part of children’s blood as is the hemoglobin that transports the oxygen that lets them run faster and faster and faster still. Only children are regularly admonished for running: No running in school hallways; No running around the pool; No running through parking lots. It saddens me that most adults have lost the sheer fun and the freedom that are the very nature of running. It gladdens me that I am not one of them.

When I was maybe eight or so, I began to go for runs with Dad. This was running for the sake of running itself, and I quickly came to love it. Now that I was running to run, I needed real running shoes and Dad bought me my first pair. They were Brooks, if I remember correctly, though I acknowledge the high possibility that I am not remembering correctly. Brooks or not, I do clearly recall being less than satisfied with the color: white with a weird coppery brown logo. Definitely no cool Nike swoosh. But Dad stressed the importance of comfort and fit over style, and damn but those ugly maybe-Brooks felt good. And fast. Dad and I ran together in the neighborhood streets around Dorsh Road and in the trails of the Euclid Creek Metropark. Once, while visiting my uncle and aunt, we ran together in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka. Dad taught me how to pace my cadence and my breathing. Dad taught me to go all out on the final stretch. Dad gave me a life-long love of running, and for that I couldn’t be more grateful.

As I got into high school running morphed into exercise. It became “working out”. I still loved it. But, at that time running meant burning calories. And, oh, how I wanted to burn those calories! So afraid was I of not being thin enough. So afraid was I to take up too much space in the world. Needless to say, fear based running – whether running from a lion, or a serial killer, or five pounds – is not joyful running. There is nothing freeing about such running. I didn’t know any of this at the time, of course. As I mentioned, Dad gave me a life-long love of running, and that included the running I did in high school. I absolutely still got the runner’s high and still loved the burn in my lungs when I’d sprint the finish. But it wasn’t my love of running that got me out the door during that time of my life. I laced up my shoes considering everything I’d eaten that day, and planned my distance and effort in terms of the calories I needed to burn. No, those runs were far from joyful.

In my mid-twenties the weight worries subsided, and this is about the time that I really began to think of myself as a Runner. Through my twenties and early thirties I embraced that label with great pride. Not only was I a Runner but I wanted to be seen as a Runner. I completed countless 5Ks and 10Ks and so many half marathons. Even one full marathon. I usually finished in the middle of my age bracket, occasionally a bit better. I was never overly concerned with where I placed, for I was my own competition (always the consummate introvert, preferring my own company even amidst race results). But I loved the race t-shirts, which announced to the world that I was a Runner. For some reason, I gave a shit. Actually, I gave a lot of shits. I don’t even want to imagine how my twenty year-old self would have handled Instagram.

As my early thirties became my mid-thirties, I began to care less about whether or not anyone knew I was a Runner. I became less interested in races, the thought of them actually exhausting me. Mind you, it wasn’t the race distances or courses that exhausted me. It was all the logistics of races: the mess of parking, maybe a shuttle to the start or finish, the milling about before the gun goes off, being bogged down in the herd at the start or at choke points on trails. I would see a flyer advertising a race and a course, and the Runner side of me would get excited. And then the other half of me (see the introvert reference in the previous paragraph), would tap the Runner half on the shoulder and whisper that I could probably do that same course at any other time without the hassle of parking and the awkwardness of pre-race milling and the frustration of the herd. The pragmatic introvert usually got her way, though occasionally the Runner’s excitement would overrule such practicalities, and I’d sign up for a road race or a short series of trail races. And then, during the search for parking and the hanging out on my own at the start and the getting stuck behind a mass of runners the moment the single-track trail took on the slightest incline, I would sense that other half of me watching with her arms crossed and a smug smile that wordlessly proclaimed “I told you so”. And it would be quite awhile before the Runner half would win a To Race or Not to Race argument. (Disclaimer: these To Race or Not to Race debates still occur regularly, and I’m confident that the Runner has plenty more wins in her future.) It’s interesting that it took until my mid-thirties for me to fall out of love with races, as I’ve preferred running alone since I was in my late teens. Actually, honesty check here: that’s not quite true – I prefer running with a dog. So, let me rephrase that: I’ve preferred running without human partners since I was in my late teens. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had amazing runs with other humans. And when I trained for the 2007 San Francisco Marathon the majority of my long runs were done in the company of one of my closest friends. But it’s been a great many years since I ran with another person. I guess when your first running partner is your Dad, the bar is set pretty high for future companions.

A couple years ago I decided I would shed the label Runner. Not because I no longer ran. Not because I no longer loved to run. No, I decided to shed the label because I’d become acutely aware of the human compulsion to label. To put things into tidy groups. It is our nature to sort: Man. Woman. Black. White. Gay. Straight. Fit. Fat. Worthy. Other. Words matter, and the words we use when talking to ourselves, the labels we use to categorize ourselves, matter. The more I sat with that, the more I realized just how much of my identity was tied to the label Runner. I’ve had injuries that sidelined me for weeks. I’ve had surgeries that sidelined me for months. And during those times the inability to run was a source of deep stress. For sure, the times I’ve been unable to run, and the frustration and depression that came with those times, were in the forefront of my mind as I considered the label Runner. I concluded that it was ridiculous to have mySelf, my sense of Self, if you will, so tightly entwined with a physical activity. Running is something I do, I told myself. It isn’t who I am. And so, although I loved to run, I decided I would no longer box mySelf in with the label Runner. I imagined that this shift away from labels was a sign of spiritual maturity. The wisdom of years lived. In truth, it was neither of those things. It was a denial of a critical part of my true Self.

I am not only a Runner.

But there can be no doubt that I am a Runner.

Why the about-face? Did I ditch my haughty views on labels and categorizing? No, those haughty views are just as strong as ever. More so, perhaps, now that I’m working on the whole radical compassion thing. What changed is my definition of Runner. Hmmm, perhaps “definition” isn’t quite right… In the previous paragraph I mentioned my concern with tying mySelf so closely to a physical activity. Ultimately, I realized I’d made a logic error there. A reversed bit, if you will. Running is a physical activity, yes. But running, I realized, is only part of being a Runner. And, really, it’s a rather small part. Of course, that method of movement, the quick turnover of feet, the smooth cadence, the rhythmic breath, the sweat, those are all things I love about running. Had I loathed them from the start my memory of sprinting through Higbees would be a different one, probably something akin to a childhood trauma. Had I hated the activity of running Dad likely would never have bought me those ugly maybe-Brooks. Surely, if I hated the heart-pounding, breath-stealing, almost-falling activity that is running, I would never have become a Runner. And yet, I’ve come to know that running itself is only a part of being a Runner. I can’t even say it’s the biggest part. The most fun part? Sure. The part to which I give the most attention? Absolutely. But I’ve come to realize that there are other things that make me a Runner. In truth, I’m no longer certain that running itself is the biggest, or even the most important, part.

So, if not running, what, then, makes me a Runner?

Well, there’s grit, for sure. The grit to get out the door in most weather (save lightning, hail, and winds above 25 MPH). The grit to get out even when there are so very many easier, and more enticing, options – YouTube rabbit hole, anyone?

And then there’s my appreciation of the journey. There’s the short-term journey of each run, be it two miles or ten. But I’m talking about appreciation for the longer journey. The understanding that a single run is just a single run, regardless of the distance. A single run that doesn’t go the way I’d planned is nothing to beat myself up over. Just as a holy-shit-I-rocked-that run is nothing to get a big head about. I’m in it for the long haul, literally, and that perspective is always front and center.

Let’s see, what else makes me a runner?

There’s the breath, of course. Long before I ever stepped on a yoga mat, long before I heard the word Sanskrit, much less Sanskrit words, I was practicing pranayama, yogic breath control. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika states: “When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.” Dad taught me to run with an easy, smooth cadence, and Dad taught me to run with an easy, rhythmic breath. (Dad just might have been my first yoga teacher…)

Pranayama flows, of course, into the meditative aspect of being a Runner. When I run I am in the moment. My problems dissolve. Though I occasionally listen to an audio book or music, I usually run with unencumbered ears, listening only to the sound of my own breath and to the sound of my own footfalls. Often my mind wanders like a dog off-leash, sniffing one sniff and then another. But during hard pushes, when I’m giving it my all, my mind is right there in that precise moment of exhilaration and pain, feeling all the feels. My seated meditation and my moving meditation may look different – the seated version is certainly less sweaty – but they are actually quite similar.

I’ll mention one last thing that makes me a runner: my acknowledgement and acceptance of my place in the Kingdom Animal. Carolus Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy – and the poster child of the human tendency to categorize – defined three Kingdoms: Animals, Plants, and Minerals. Funny that so many modern humans tend to see themselves as something outside – and above – the Kingdom Animal. (I suspect that religion – a topic for an entirely different post that may never happen – has much to do with this silliness: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'”) We refer to “animals” as Other. As though we are not one of their creeping number. I am all too aware of myself as Animal. If I were a fern or a bit of quartz or a small pond I would not run. But I am not a fern or a quartz or a pond. I am an animal. And so I run. It is what I do. It is what most – but not all – animals do. (I’ve never heard of a sprinting sloth, though my unfettered imagination can picture it, and it is adorable.)

Grit, big-picture vision, breath, meditation, biology – these attributes are what make me a Runner, and these attributes will be part of my core regardless of whether I’m running daily or haven’t run in a year or haven’t run in a decade. I’ve been a Runner for as long as I can remember. I’ll be a Runner for as long as this animal has breath in her lungs. This will be true regardless of race entries or placement. This will be true regardless of weekly mileage or pace.

I am a Runner. I will always be a Runner.

This will be true.

Regardless.