To Race There are runners who have run for years and have yet to pin on a number and race against their peers along a timed and measured course. Those who do race on a regular basis look at these people and shake their heads, wondering what is the point of regularly putting in all of those miles and then not putting them to good use in a contest of speed. They construct various analogies: It’s like dating your whole life and never getting married. It’s like writing twothirds of a novel and then putting it in a drawer. It’s like buying a hot sports car and locking it in the garage. It’s like working your way through college and then skipping the senior prom and graduation ceremonies. It’s like . . . What their critics don’t understand is that for some, running on a regular basis is an end in and of itself. It lessens daily workplace or family stress. It maintains healthy body weight. It confers a level of fitness. It controls blood pressure. It bestows a bandoleer of health and fitness benefits. After all, this is the modern world. We no longer run from saber-toothed tigers or chase down our next meal in order to survive. We can run merely to run—for the simple, elemental joy of it. And by that evolution to the modern, more laid-back era, we’ve clawed our way out of Hemingway’s definition of sport. To Hemingway, there were only three sports: mountain climbing, bull8 l MARATHON & BEYOND l MAR/APR 2006

fighting, and auto racing; everything else was a game, he contended, because there was little chance of losing your life in the process. No saber-toothed tigers, no “sport” to running. The simple act of running today is an opportunity to connect with our world on the most basic of levels and, in the process, to use and sometimes abuse ourselves in a healthy, seemingly natural way. It is no accident that the largest bones and muscles in the human body are in the legs. They were meant to serve as the primary motive mechanism for the human animal. It is also no accident that the human being’s cooling system is so sophisticated—so sophisticated, in fact, that paced properly, the human being can run for mile upon mile, day after day if necessary, the sweating mechanism keeping the runner cool and efficient while mere animals begin to slow roast from the inside out. But the same intrinsic natural mechanisms that allow us to run seemingly forever are complemented by a deep-seated psychological lust to challenge ourselves. Again, mankind would not have flourished if it lacked the inner drive to excel in a number of areas, one of them running: against the dangers and complications of the natural environment and against each other. It is not difficult to imagine ancient man engaging in contests of speed after

In those bygone days, it was more basic stuff: the stuff of survival and the stuff of ranking one another, something that filters down to man from most of the animal species. The clack and crash of caribou antlers echoing over the vast tundra during rutting season is not uncommon within the animal planet. In the world of “games” (in a nod to Hemingway’s distinction), competition can invigorate or destroy. It can destroy those who live for nothing else and who see every movement in the brush a potential contest to the death—whether the movement comes from a squash rival or a gentle breeze off the ocean. But competition can also inspire and invigorate and can serve to nudge

dining on a mammoth steak or competing with each other to see who could bag the greatest number of warthogs during the current porcine season. If, as modern scientists say, there is a risk-taker gene present in a certain percentage of the human population, that gene must certainly be a branch of the more common competition gene, which is, of course, located directly opposite the helix from the lazy-as-afly-glutted-toad gene, which used to be either recessive or present in those who drowned in the gene pool or were eaten by the saber tooth. Today, in a less vital and tenacious world, the competitive gene too often morphs into the He With The Most Toys Wins gene.

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the runner to the next level of training and the intrinsic satisfaction that comes with living on a higher level. It’s wonderful to spend some time on a plateau while you catch your breath, but taking up residence there usually turns out to be less than advertised: there’s too much erosion going on at your feet and too many boulders tumbling down from above to make it comfortable. (Can I get a “That’s enough!” on the analogies?) “While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department,” wrote Andrew Carnegie in the essay “Wealth” in the June 1889 issue of the North American Review.

To compete can be hard on the individual. Think of the final 10K stretch in a hard marathon. But in the process, it elevates the race—it elevates the human condition as a whole. Although competition, especially in today’s schools, is politically incorrect, what else is there in life? Without it, we are a bird that has too long overstayed the nest. . . . Ask any parent whose grown children have come back home to roost. Competition forces us to become better—even in the long, quiet moments when we are no longer competing. We must stress and strain so that the pause afterward can strengthen us. That’s the nature of all physical and mental training: stress, rest, improve. —Rich Benyo