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From the Editor's Desk

by Dennis Ernst • July 10, 2018


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Running has always played a big part in my life ever since high school track. I never won a race for the team, but I did earn a healthy craving for the activity. Those of you who run know what I mean. For those of you who don't, let me try to make some sense of what you may consider to be senseless: running for the sake of running. Forrest Gump understood it, you should, too.

My first experience in running was as a "tweenager." Every night after dinner, Dad would take me and  my brothers to the horse track in our small town and run laps. That's where I learned you should never run right after a meal. A gut full of food punishes runners of all ages by stabbing them from the inside. It's a wonder the excruciating evening "side stitch" didn't prompt a vow to never run for the rest of my life.

I answered the calling next in high school when I joined the track team. After three weeks of practice, the coach discerned each member's individual assets and placed them in the event for which we were best suited, I was placed in the mile run. Not because that's where my talents would help the team win meets, but because the mile was the dumping ground for gangly teens who didn't have any talent at all. Kinda like Forrest.

It wasn't until after college, marriage and fatherhood that I finally discovered the joy of running and worked it into a daily routine. I would run in all seasons, conditions, temperatures and terrains. Eventually, I would enter races, not to win, but to add an interesting element to what had become for me that decent diversion all husbands and fathers should afford themselves. But eventually I did win a local 10K race in my age group, started training for longer distances, and completed three mini-marathons. For all the country and city miles I've run, I've only been bitten by a dog once. But that's one more than Forrest Gump ever got.

There's something innate about running. For many of us, it's calling of the highest order---maybe primordial, maybe divine---that cannot be suppressed, not even by a merely excruciating stitch in the side. Walking doesn't answer the call. It's not exhausting enough. In fact, exhaustion is at the heart of the obsession. Merely getting tired isn't enough; you have to get exhausted, fully spent, completely drained of energy, sweat and will. Runners run to be emptied of it all. Then we quit and call it good.

It's good because the process of pursuing sheer exhaustion takes us to a place we can get to no other way. It removes obstacles to clear thinking. It's a fog-lifter that invites reason, insight, logic and perspective that is otherwise obscured, even disallowed in a state of rest. It facilitates clear thinking and right judgment. Every pivotal decision I've ever made while pursuing exhaustion has been the right one, and I've made plenty. I don't know the physiology of it all, but it happens, and makes us lifelong runners. It may not be the same as a "runner's high," but it's high enough for me.

Unfortunately, I had to hang up my Nikes after 30 years of pounding the pavement. Hip fatigue was setting in, making it painful for hours after each jaunt. I went more than ten years without the benefits---or the pain---of running long distances. I missed it and the clear thinking greatly. Recently, however, I rediscovered the joy of being spent when I purchased a Giant Escape road bike,

Once again, I can spend over an hour pursuing exhaustion, getting all the benefits but without the impact. It's not the same as putting one foot down after the other mile after mile, but it's not far from it. Aptly named, my Escape helps me do just that. Cruising the roads of northern Michigan in 24th gear takes me where I've longed to be for over a decade. A place every person needs to visit for clear thinking as often as possible. Pouring myself out on the road does for me what no gym can ever do. Best of all, now I can outrun most dogs. 

And that's all I've got to say about that.

 

Respectfully,

 

Dennis J. Ernst, editor
[email protected]

 

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