Marathon: You Can Do It

“Running maketh the whole man”

I see that whole person as being part animal, part child, part artist, and part saint. Running makes me all of these. It makes me a whole person.

I begin as body. “Be first a good animal,” wrote Emerson. I am. I have that animal energy, that ease of movement, that good tight body, that sense of occupying just the right amount of space. I am pared down to bone and muscle. My skin taut, my eyes clear, I have become my body. I occupy it with delight.

The test prove what I feel. My biological age is that of a person 30 years younger. I have the oxygen capacity and physical work capacity of a 40-year-old instead of someone over 70. My pulse is slow, my blood pressure normal. My body fat is a mere 5 percent. Yet I am different from others my age who run with me. Running proves that man at any age is the greatest marvel in the world.

Next comes the child. Running makes me a child, a child at play. That is the aim of life: to become an adult while remaining a child at heart. Play is the key. When we play, we do things because we want to, without thought of payment.

Play is something we would do for nothing, something that has meaning but no purpose. When I run, I feel that. For that hour a day, I am a child finally doing what I want to do and enjoying it. When I do, I realize what happens to the body is simply a bonus. I must first play an hour a day, then all other things will be added on.

One great addition is to make myself an artist. Being an artist is, after all, only seeing things, the solutions to our problems. Running gives me that creativity. It provides the meditative setting. It opens up areas in my mind I seem not to use otherwise.

At the minimum, it places me where these things can happen. A physician friend of mine expressed it this way: “I decided to run at a pace that would allow me to (1) enjoy my surroundings; (2) let me think a bit; and (3) be alone for an hour a day.” I agree. On the roads at a pace I could run forever, I find what that “forever” is all about.

Finally, running has given me the chance to be a saint, to be a hero. Like everyone else, I want to be challenged. I want to find out whether or not I am a coward. I want to see how much effort I can put out… what I can endure… if I measure up. Running allows that.

I can run the classic race, the mile, and know the terrible pain that accompanies that third quarter-mile and the almost total oblivion of that final 100 yards to the finish. I can suffer, die, and be born again in a 6-mile race over hills on a cross-country course. And I can compete with myself in the marathon, the race Roger Bannister called the “acme of athletic heroism.”

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.

George Sheehan on Running to Win