I know my writing limitations, so I like to borrow from the experts for inspiration. The following is a funny article I read recently that I thought I would share. I know I can certainly relate:)
Runner's World
The Newbie Chronicles
COUCH BOUND
By Marc Parent
Only in an activity as punishing as running would you strive to get bitten. You don't hear snowboarders or golfers or bowlers talking about how they hope to be bitten. You don't hear a group of guys watching the playoffs over beer and pretzels saying they just hope they can keep it up. One could as easily use the word infected. It doesn't have the same ring, but it means the same thing. It means that you have arrived at a mythical place I can only imagine, where you can no sooner start the day without a run than I could eat a cake without frosting. My friend who gets out every day has told me that running, for him, is like brushing his teeth in the morning—you just hop out of bed and do it. My friend is bitten. Me and my unbitten tribe—we just hop out of bed and brush our teeth. Then we just walk into the kitchen and just put on a big old pot of coffee. We toast up a big old English muffin and just put a big old dollop of honey on it. Having run a mile or so fairly regularly for two and a half months, I had hoped I could accurately describe myself as bitten—injected with a healthy kind of poison that would morph me if not into a die-hard runner, at least into a solid gotta-get-a-run-in runner. I've looked for the bite in all the places I might find it—in the lines of medical statistics that say running makes you stronger, shapelier, sharper, and less likely to need a whole host of excruciating procedures. I've searched for it in the admiring glances of my wife and kids when I lace up my shoes, in the eyes of my nonrunning friends who have turned from skeptical to respecting. I have listened to the calm within my body for an uncomfortable buzz that would find satisfaction only after a good, hard run. I have not allowed myself to wear my supa-cool, extremely comfortable Asics Gels to the movies or the school or even anywhere in the house in the hopes that I would miss them so much, I'd get out on the road just to see them flashing beneath me again. Through all this and more, I have been nudged and sniffed and turned from side to side, but I have not been bitten. Proof: I fell off the wagon for three solid weeks. In my defense, I was pushed off by a cold. My running friend would say a cold is no excuse to stop brushing your teeth, but for me and my other unbittens, it is. A cold, no matter how small, is a dismayingly effective excuse not to get up at a frosty 7 a.m. to trundle through the slush along the side of the road. The cold lasted only a few days, but then, see if this sounds familiar: I had to pick up the kids, it was raining, I had a phone call/shopping list/leaking faucet that just wouldn't wait, there was a special report on TV, hungry visitors, a birthday party, a headache, a hang nail, a solar eclipse, a giant, honey-soaked English muffin with a gun to my head, saying, step away from the running shoes... And I have a job, you know. I'm no Hollywood fit-freak who gets paid to be in shape. Someone has to work around here, and as much as I would have absolutely loved to grind out a few miles, something really important came up every two minutes for an unprecedented three weeks. Far worse than having to admit to this hiatus is having to admit how painless it was. I wish I could honestly say I missed it more than I actually did, but not running for three weeks was the easiest three weeks of my running life. It wasn't the best three weeks, but it was the easiest. The worst thing about a three-week break is not that it feels like quitting, it's that it feels like you've already quit. Three weeks is not a break. Three weeks means that if you do decide to run, you won't return to it as much as start it again, which makes it all the more difficult to go back. I imagine quitting a sedentary lifestyle is probably a lot like quitting smoking or drinking or any other unhealthy thing, in that the failures are indelibly embedded into the eventual success. The good news in that endeavor is that you don't have to avoid every setback, you only have to succeed one more time than you fail. The morning I tried to succeed again, I stepped out of bed and immediately put on my sweats and running shoes. I hadn't really decided to go running, only to put on an old costume and walk downstairs. "Runner-man?" my wife, Susan, asked under her breath as I passed her in the kitchen. I faintly nodded. Our youngest looked up from his bowl of cereal with his eyes wide. "Can I have your autograph?" he said with a more capable sarcasm than I could ever have you believe. I pushed him on the back of the head. "Whoa—running?" my middle child said. "I guess I am," I said, and leaned against the kitchen table to stretch my calf. My eldest joker slapped me on the back with a hardy sense of false earnestness and announced with a low voice that he was very proud of me. Once they left, I headed out. At 6:45 in the morning, the bedroom lights in houses along the valley road are only just flickering on. You can see who is awake and who is still asleep. After only three weeks, I had forgotten how quiet the predawn world can be. The only sound was that satisfying sic-sic-sic-sic of shoes against the dark, moist tar—the runner's tick-tock. A small flock of crows crossed the overcast sky in the distance and dove into a lone treetop and called wildly at each other. Every 50 or so yards came the skittering sound of a small animal darting from the shoulder of the road, back into the woods. The low roar of a rushing stream rose in volume as I neared it, then followed me out past the one-mile mark. My breathing rose to the same level, but I didn't feel tired at all. I felt rested, awakened, stirred up, but not tired. It felt good to be out. Quitting is a temporary thing. It's something that is very hard to maintain over an extended period of time. If you intend to quit running and you plan to somehow make the quitting stick, you have to be determined about it. You have to be focused and extremely consistent. You have to quit every single day for the rest of your life. That's actually a very tough thing to do. I thought about this while watching clouds turn orange with the rising sun, the black, gnarled branches passing overhead. There is plenty to dislike about running, but there is really a lot to love about it, too. It's not the kind of love you have for an old movie or a good dog, certainly not the kind of love you have for an English muffin, but it's love all the same. Albeit, a strange kind of love. A weird kind of love, actually. You could almost call it a bitten kind of love.
Copyright © 2008 Rodale Inc. All rights reserved.
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