The Finishing Kick: The Mind of the Runner
Is there a runner's worldview?
By Rachel Toor
As featured in the December 2007 issue of Running Times Magazine
Here's an odd argument for a running magazine: Does it make sense to speak of the mind of the runner? The runner's worldview? The runner's lifestyle? Does it make sense, even, to talk about the runner's body type?
Not to me.
Essentialist outlooks are common. It's not hard to find someone to argue that men and women are fundamentally different, that dogs and cats can't get along because of the way they are. There's a story from the movie "The Crying Game" about a scorpion who convinces a frog to let him hitch a ride on his back, even though the frog is afraid the scorpion will bite him. When the scorpion bites the frog, and they're both about to die, the frog asks why he did it. The scorpion says he couldn't help it--it was in his nature. This is the argument of essentialism. I don't buy it.
Not wanting to think about life--and people--in ways that reduce and flatten into generalities is one of the reasons we read great literature. Things are interesting in their specificity.
I do not believe that there is such a thing as a runner's worldview. In the first place, that would beg agreement about who gets to be called a runner. I won't rehearse the stale arguments here about joggers, "Gallo-walkers," whether Marion Jones or multisport races should be featured in a running magazine, but I will stop to wonder who gets to decide who gets to count. There are many different ways of running. To me, they are all valid.
If you start looking at the reasons people run, the diversity becomes even greater. In college I found my best excuse for not running from a friend who paraphrased Dorothy Parker's crack about how it's better to have written than to write. I don't do things I don't like to do. But there are plenty of runners who prefer the way they feel after the run is over. There are runners who don't like to race; runners who never wear a watch; those who run only in the company of others; those who go only by themselves. Some devour each issue of Race Results Weekly and plenty couldn't name one elite marathoner or Olympian of any year at any distance. Some run only on the track, some only the trails.
Many lace up their shoes out of fear of fat, many because they believe it's good for them. Are these people not real runners? Do they share a worldview with those who think that if you can't run a marathon in under three hours you shouldn't be allowed to buy running shoes? If you're not cachectic and wearing a race shirt and impossibly tiny shorts all the time, do you not look like a runner?