Recently, a finger injury has forced me to cut down on my climbing, and I have begun picking up one of the other sports in which I delight... running. Now, one thing you should know about me is that when I begin to get back into something, I generally don't like to hold anything back. Immediately following my first run, I was full steam ahead into the world of speculation concerning the sport. Often there is an underlying theme to each new obsession that drives the majority of my thoughts, and true to the norm, my new burst into the sport of running was accompanied by the theme of “go all-natural man.” The result: I am now running barefoot-style and eating an inordinate quantity of beans and tortillas.
Of course, due to my abstract approach to the world, any renaissance in my hobbies is accompanied by a redirection in the paradigm of my world view. That statement, when translated out of the big words used primarily to impress you the reader... “runnin' got me straight-up trippin, son!” Yes, that's right, the sport that ordinarily struts titles such as “an excellent cardio workout” or “a great way to get disciplined and lose weight” has now shown that it is much more than the #1 way to inflict personal misery on ones self (for one's own good, of course). Rather, during my dark and cold late-night runs around Bozeman, running has come to reveal itself to me as one of the most natural, fun, and freeing activities that a guy can do. And the best part... running is merely the catalyst that got the realizing started. The real meat of the epiphany is that I have discovered the term “workout” is just the naughty nickname that was given to the word “play” sometime around the time that people started realizing their middles were getting a bit too girthy.
Thinking back to the early years when I was still but a wee lad, most of my childhood memories involve me being in constant motion. The most vivid memories I have with my friend Luke include: riding our bikes up and down the streets of Absarokee all day, swimming, hiking the gnarly hill behind my house 15 or 20 times a day for the purpose of “extreme sledding”, running around my yard throwing arrows, playing football late into the night, hiking all over the hills behind my house, and engaging in enormous excavation projects. Man, with all that “working out”, we must have had the bodies of Greek gods! The ladies must have been swarming us like Jack Lalanne in a retirement home.
Well, as both Luke and I can attest, our history involved few to no women... and the ones it did involve had little interest in us. But we could have cared less about women and looking ripped at the beach... we were just having a kickin' good time. “Working out” was not a decision at all... it just happened because when we got up in the morning, it was just what we wanted to do.
I wish I could pin down the source of the problem so that I could go rage on something and fix it up, but somewhere in the process of growing up, the heart-pounding, sweat-pouring, leg-burning, bouncing-off-the-walls play that we enjoyed as rug rats suddenly becomes work... and staring at a screen and wiggling a fork or a controller with our fingers becomes such a captivating form of play that you'd think there were spells involved.
One of the things I have learned recently is that humans are one of the most incredible endurance creatures on the face of the earth. To have such uncommon endurance, we are also genius at conserving energy. So, if there is something that we would rather not do, well then it takes either an act of God or some well-placed bait to get us to do it. For our purposes, I'm going to go ahead and assume that fear of some kind of punishment is a well-placed form of bait.
Now, ask yourself this... have you ever had running or some form of physical activity flaunted at you as a form of punishment? I certainly have. Have you ever been told to run because it will make you faster or stronger or thinner? I certainly have. Now, along those same lines, have you ever been told to run because it is slammin' good time? Ooh, the plot thickens.
Take a piece of tasty chocolate cake and slam in in your mouth. Now, take the back end of a spoon and pack it in a bit, maybe even wedge it down your throat a ways. If a little bite is good, then that bite you are currently experiencing must be the most rapturous thing you've experienced since falling in love! Having trouble swallowing it? Squish 'er down a little and see if you can get 'er to slide down your gullet. Mmm, now isn't that marvelous!
If you were ordered to eat cake like that on a regular basis, the tasty treat would suddenly no longer be a tasty treat. It would rather become an object of torture which turns your stomach at the very thought of it. The only time you would force it down might be out of the duty of being polite, but there would be no pleasure, only work for you as you consumed it.
Isn't it the same with “play” and “working out?” Running was play when I was little. I had little bites of it and even some big bites of it. I loved it because it was associated with freedom and fun. When I began sports, running was jammed down my throat as a form of conditioning to make me better and as a form of punishment to keep the teams in which I was involved behaving well. I handled it better than many of my peers, and I even would run on my own when I wasn't at practice.
But it wasn't for fun anymore... it was for making me better. It was to impress, to succeed, and to be strong for the rest of the team. Every time I ran, I felt like people were watching. I really didn't want to do it... I had to do it. When running, I felt about as free as Clydesdale strapped to the Budweiser wagon.
When the rein of high school sports had ended, I headed off to college and I scarcely ran throughout my whole first year. I loved hiking in the mountains, and I prided myself on my cardiovascular prowess. The few runs in which I did participate were based out of fear of losing my mad skills. I had images of myself as a triple-chinned 35-year old who constantly broods over the old days due to a shortage of current adventure. The prospect was terrifying, but it still wasn't enough to motivate me to run regularly. Aah, I had come of age, I was now officially an adult, and running and other sports had made their natural progression from being “play” to being a “workout.”
Thankfully, there was a greater force at work in my life... I had a bit of the Peter Pan syndrome going. I did not want to grow up. Secretly, in the dungeon-like climbing gym of Montana State University, a great power was arising. Multiple days a week, I would sneak down to the gym and partially for the purpose of “working out,” and mostly for the purpose of having a slammin' good time, I would climb route after route until I was so exhausted that I struggled to turn a door knob. The busier and more stressful my life outside of climbing became, the more and more my time lapping the routes made me feel like a kid on a jungle gym.
By the time I was on my way back from student teaching in New Zealand, the concept of “play” had begun to leak out of climbing and become applied to mountain biking. Then, by the time my job as a middle school math teacher was under way, “play” was becoming a term I would use to describe running. That feeling of being out of breath and utterly exhausted went from being the sting of a mandatory “workout” to being the sweet and precious side effects of freedom from responsibility and work.
Recently I read the incredible book Born to Run. One of the major themes of the book is that humans have the physical attributes that make us remarkable endurance athletes. Essentially, if we don't run and play and use our athleticism, we are going against who we are born to be. The side effects... we get depressed, our diets get out of whack, cancer cells grow like weeds in a neglected garden, heart disease goes wild, diabetes takes hold, and on and on and on. Playing isn't unnatural... it's one of the most natural parts about you! So, the next time you are feeling like you have to “work out,” click the switch in your head and realize that you really just get to go play. Be a kid about it... go barefoot, stop and smell some flowers, explore a trail, or try something new... I recommend climbing some boulders or trying some mountain biking. Take as big of bites as you want, and remember, the world is the biggest and most deluxe playground that you'll ever see... enjoy recess!
