The Brady Bunch

It is 6:45 on Friday night.  I am sitting here at the computer, drinking coffee and watching the Brady Bunch.  This reminds me of when I was young.  Except when I was young, I would not have been drinking coffee.  It would have been Kool Aid, unless I was lucky enough to score a third of a Coke.  I say a third, because we were rarely allowed to have soda when we were kids, and if we did, my sisters and I had to share it.  That third of a Coke tasted good, though.  I also would not have been sitting at a computer.  Maybe an abacus or counting stuff with my toes.  Did they have computers when I was ten?  I wouldn't have cared less.  Maybe the whole sitting around thing is bull crap too, because any spare moment I had as a kid was spent running around and doing stuff.  Remember when we just did stuff?  Played football, kick the can, baseball, tag and, of course, we ran and rode bikes.  We ran and rode everywhere.  It wasn't exercise, it was fun.  And a means to get to and fro.  It was exercise, but we did not look at it as so...and it was fun.

There were a couple posts on Facebook about runner's pet peeves.  One was posted by Runner's World.  The pet peeves were eye opening.  It turns out there are a lot of very angry runners.  They hate people who wear headphones, they hate people who run slow, they hate people who walk, they hate people with strollers, they hate people with dogs.  Maybe I'm being a bit extreme, but there are some very judgmental runners out there.  My main pet peeve is runners who take themselves too seriously.  And runners who bullshit about their times and their accomplishments.  In general, I love runners.  I love what they are trying to do, what they are trying to achieve and how hard most of them work.  Some will never be fast.  Some will never be thin.  But they try.  Every day.  They get out there and it is hard.  Some people are born to run, others really aren't.   Every step is an effort.  Every bit of time cut off the mileage run is hard earned.  But they keep trying and they stay with it, even in the face of the asshole runners who apparently can't stand them.  They can't stand me because I listen to music, because I wear sweatpants instead of compression tights.  I appreciate the fluid runners.  The ones that make it look so effortless.  It is a thing of beauty to watch someone with perfect running form.  But they don't inspire me.  It is the ones who have to work for every step that do.  I love some of the people I run with.  Some of them make it look easy, but it isn't.  I know it isn't.  I know how hard they work and they also would be the first to reach out and help some of the ones who are struggling.  My advice to some of the ones who are a bit slower is to latch on to a few of the faster runners and try to keep up.  Don't feel inferior or slow, but rather try to catch them.  Try to keep up on some of their slower runs.  Don't hold them back on their speed or tempo days, and don't feel like they are trying to dis you when they take off.  Use their slow day as your speed day.  Don't begrudge someone who is faster, unless they are assweeds and then use their assweedineness as motivation to beat them.  We can't run faster unless we run faster.  Very few people have reached their peak speeds or endurance.  If something or someone bothers you, work harder.  Otherwise, just be content to go out and run.  There is nothing wrong with that either.  I want to be faster.  I want to be stronger.  I want to blow by some people with my 52 year old body, my earphones in, my sweatpants on and a smile on my face.  My advice is to ignore the ones with these petty pet peeves.  As good as most of these people think they are, they really aren't that good.  And they are probably jerks in their every day life.  No one knows their name and it is, after all, just running.

What is my point in all this?  Who knows.  Sometimes I just think back to when I was a kid.  When running was just something I did.  It wasn't exercise, it was fun.  I have tried to keep it fun, even though it is hard at this stage of life at times.  Maybe that is why I steer away at times from a formal training plan.  Because I like to to go as my body feels.  I'm going to close this with a conversation I had yesterday with a customer.  I discovered she was a runner as well and she told me how she hurt her back and could not run for quite some time.  She had back surgery and was told she shouldn't run.  Her friends think she is crazy that she is back up to 5 or 6 miles per run.  She said to me, "running gets in your blood, you know?"  I do know.