Why on earth...?

Again, why run a marathon.  In the age of automobiles, mechanization, even horses, there is absolutely no human need to travel 26.2 miles by foot.  It doesn’t make sense.  Especially if you don’t like to run.  The distance that it takes anywhere between 2.5 and 6 hours to run can be covered slowly in 2 hours by bike, or just a little over 1 hour by bike if you’re in pretty good shape.  A certain 7 time Tour de France winner can clear that distance in less than 1 hour, easy.  By car it’s anywhere between 1 hour on city streets and 30 minutes (or less) on the highway.  Plus you have additional cargo space to bring groceries, friends, or whatever along for the ride.

Sure, there are health benefits, but study after study shows that the health benefits end around mile 10 or so.  You actually do more damage to your body in the last half of a marathon than you benefit you body in the first half.  Health wise, you’d be far better served to train for a marathon than you are to run a marathon.  So, who do it?  Especially if you don’t like to run?  Why put your body through the rigors of dehydration and overexertion?  Why risk serious joint and muscle injury?  Why risk serious health issues of a heart attack, or twisted ankle, blown knee, ripped soft muscle tissue, heat stroke, hypotoxemia (the opposite of dehydration), and whatnot?

 

If you’re expecting me to argue that running a marathon is not an extremely dumb thing to do, sorry to disappoint.  I won’t be making that argument.  I’ll be running a marathon, but I don’t think it’s very smart of me to be doing it.

 

The answer I have is simply why not do it?  Why not risk it?  If the best excuse you have for NOT running a marathon is that it’s uncomfortable or potentially damaging to your health, you don’t have a very good excuse not to run a marathon.  You either have to get on with living, or get on with dying.  In this world, we don’t have many other options.  If you wake up every morning afraid that the day’s events might hurt you, or cause your untimely demise (that’s a funny phrase to me, but I’ll discuss that later), or be uncomfortable, then stay in bed and stay out of my way.  I’m going to step out and make myself afraid every once in a while.  I’m going to risk failure every once in a while.  Every once in a while I’m going to bleed just to be sure I’m still able.  ‘Cause when you stop being able to feel pain, you stop being able to feel joy.  And without joy, why bother.

 

This comes back around to the cause for which I strap on the shoes and run.  These abused children that Child Advocates takes care of don’t get the option to feel joy.  In fact, it wasn’t even their choice to feel the pain.  It was thrust on them.  If it goes on too long, they just go numb and expect life to be like that always, so they react back in the same way it comes at them.  They become calloused, unfeeling, joyless adults who inflict the same pain on their children and the cycle perpetuates itself.  If you can’t feel joy, then why bother.  The volunteers of Child Advocates introduce joy back into these kiddo’s lives.  The volunteers step into the situation and choose to feel the pain that these kids feel and understand the whole situation.  By taking that pain in for the brief amount of time they are allowed to interact with the kids, they part the clouds and introduce the possibility of joy.  They introduce the option of feeling something other than simply numbness.

 

That’s why I run.  I’m running a marathon to risk failure and therefore achieve victory.  I’m running a marathon not to feel pain, but to know joy.  Because without joy, why bother.