Miles, Cats, and Finding Your Purpose
At the end of January, Chris McClung did a podcast episode called “Back to the Basics, 5 Pillars of Long Term Running Success.” According to him, the five pillars are: Consistency, Maintaining a Stress/Rest Balance, Weekly Strides, Strength/Mobility, and… Finding your Running Purpose. Chris has done entire episodes on creating your statement of purpose, which he deems necessary if you want to set and achieve big goals. But he wants you to really delve deep- your statement of purpose should be something that gets you out of bed on those hard mornings, or gets you through the last miles of a marathon when you want to quit. He wants you to dig so deep, in fact, that I’m still working on my statement of purpose. You should reject anything that’s extrinsic, such as “I run so my kids will be proud of me.” (Your kids will still be proud of you even if you don’t run!) Or “I run to lose weight.” (You can lose weight in other ways, and what if you don’t lose as much weight as you want- would you stop running?) He wants you to figure out what it is, deep inside of you, that makes you run. After plugging up the holes in our fence, we’ve recently started letting our cat outside in the backyard- a development that she’s thrilled with. She spends hours out there, running back and forth, chasing butterflies, and exploring. While I watched her run today, I thought about how it’s in her nature to run, just as it’s in the butterflies nature to fly, and thought, “Hmm! Maybe that’s my statement of purpose! I run because it’s satisfying something deep in my nature.” That sounded good- running connects me to the world and other creatures in this fundamental way. But wait! Flashback to many, many years ago, when I was in high school and was telling my dad how many miles I ran that day, how many I wanted to run the next day, and the next day after that… and he said “Why are you so obsessed with miles? Why don’t you just run until you’re tired, and then stop?” Wait. What? Why would I do that? That would be CRAZY! Everyone keeps track of their miles… right? I can’t even imagine running without logging the miles. Counting the miles, comparing it to last week and last month, planning mileage for the upcoming week… not to mention checking my pace on my Garmin, and charting the progress from my speedwork. It’s all part of running, and I love that part. But then… if my statement of purpose is to run free in nature like my ancestors (and my cat) why does it matter how fast and far I’m going? Because it does matter. So obviously my statement of purpose goes beyond that primal urge to run. Maybe it also taps into that desire we all have to improve ourselves. We constantly want to build on the progress we’ve made to get to the next level, and the next level after that. When people reassess monthly goals, you never hear anyone say “Last month was perfect! March will be more of the same!” There’s always the desire to make it better. You can see why my running statement of purpose is a work in progress. Anyone have any insights as to why you run? I mean, there are lots of other ways to keep fit, that don’t involve being out in the cold, ice, rain, heat, and subjecting ourselves to potential injuries. What is it that makes you love running?