Running

"Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative." – Steve Prefontaine.

Running has been on my mind for as long as I can remember, but it has been even more so in this last month because of the 12 kilometer Bloomsday race in Spokane, Washington. A race that draws people from all over the United States and the world even, a race that includes ages ranging from 8 to 80 years of age, a race who’s numbers reach 50,000 on a yearly bases.  This idea of getting outside of ones self in order to truly see the world from a different view point is amazing to me and it is something that I try and achieve each and every time I lace up my running shoes and head out for yet another out of the body experience.

I run. More that most people think is normal, a lot more. I love it, especially when it sucks and I collapse at the end of the day smiling because I’m dog tired and sore as hell. Pure bliss, by my definition, consists of nothing more than miles of trails stretching forever in front of me, mine for the taking. I love the feeling of pain fighting for control during a race. I hate being called a ‘jogger’. I need to hurt; it proves that I’m alive. I hate running almost as much as I love it. The most quintessential form of art, the human body pushing itself beyond the maximum, into the unknown, while all ideology flies by, like and human…dissolving. I was born to run, not born to run faster than everyone, but given that desire…I’ve met few people with the same passion for running. It never ceases to amaze me that after 20 miles of torment I can wake up the next morning begging for more.

I can’t say that I know what an out of the body experience feels like but as far as I’m concerned, running and long segments of physical exercise is the closest anyone can really get to reaching that sense of enlightenment at this stage in our world with the technology that we have.

When I am running, I enter a different zone, a place where I can think about everything and nothing at the same time. A place where everything makes sense, but at the same time nothing does. I ask myself why I go run and there is only one answer.

Runners High.

No, its not any kind of drug you can find on the black market or what not, it is something that comes from within yourself. Runner high is that feeling you get when you are dog tired, dead on your feet yet you feel so great that all you can do is smile. The feeling I have at the end of a long race is like nothing I can fully explain. Runners High is ‘The Other’ in this case because it is something that many of us do not understand either because we do not run or because we have never run fast or hard enough to reach that level of knowledge. To know that I have just pushed my body to its limit is what makes me believe that this is an out of the body experience.

"A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself." –Prefontaine.