Why we run: One man's words

I'd like to share with you the contents of a recent Facebook post by an old journalism friend of mine. This barrel-chested former hard smoker/drinker was a fun-loving colleague of mine for many years. He started jogging as a relatively young adult, in his mid-20s ... when he was still a regular cigarette smoker! He loved to brag about his "fat ass 5ks" that he would do most mornings, no matter the activities of the night before. Well, here it is, several decades later. The cigarettes and the beer are in his past, but the running is not. He wrote this tribute to the jogging habit that he very much loves, and I share it with you here:

"Tomorrow morning I lace these bad boys up to mark my 30th anniversary as somebody who embraced running beyond sprints and laps after soccer or lacrosse practice (the one day I did not finish last in post-practice sprints on the Spackenkill soccer team, the coach said "He didn't finish last. Somebody's dogging it. We do 'em again," how's that for encouragement?)

"I've run in the French Quarter in NOLA, on Fisherman's Wharf in SF, on Route 66 in the New Mexico desert at dawn with a crescent moon standing watch, and past Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. I've run in heat indexes above 100 and in a wind chill of -42. I've run dozens of 5Ks, half a dozen 10Ks, two half marathons, and one grueling 26.2-mile slog (organizers had no water for slowpokes until Mile 8 and we understandably panicked - all my matches were burned by Mile 5).

"My daily run has helped me deal with one prolonged period of unemployment, one divorce, recovery from cancer surgery, and many a day when I just plain felt like a lonely man. It's helped me work out stories, solve problems, and kept me from growing like a blimp. It's enabled me to tell two physicians and two insurance companies their flimsy "big data" meant Jack S--t and then run the treadmills to prove it. I've talked to the docs on the leading edge of exercise science and found it takes surprisingly little running at surprisingly leisurely paces to feel like a tiger.

"Thirty years. And, back-of-envelope, 20,000 miles. The vast majority of those miles logged in 2.2- to 3.1-mile reveries at paces best described as stately. I won't mind going to eternity eventually, as long as I can get my run in that morning."