EXCERPT Tap the Athlete
the runners. Ask them how they got into running. If there are eight people there, seven of them will reveal that they weren’t athletes in high school. In each case they will be happy to confirm two things:
1. I never imagined that I was a runner until I became one.
2. I’m more comfortable with myself now that I’m a runner than I’ve ever been in my life. The nice thing about running is that the runner is always there,
patiently waiting to be released. There isn’t a predetermined starting date or a firm expiration date. One of the easiest ways to release the athletic beast inside and
to keep it loose is to set running goals, both short term and long term. It’s fine on occasion to just run around for the sake of basic movement, but to loosen the athlete, goals are necessary, both as a motivational factor (to get you out the door on days you’d rather not go) and as a testing factor (testing just how good you can be with a requisite amount of training). Setting goals is a process that runs parallel with the personali-
ties of most people who get involved in running, and it is a way of laying out yardsticks end-to-end toward reaching a long-term goal. You may start with modest goals and grow from there. You may be surprised at how motivating reaching goals can be. Set a short-term goal and achieve it, and you will be doubly motivated to strive for the intermediate goal, and from there to the long-term goal. One of the most impressive runners I’ve ever met, and a guy who
really knows goals, is John Keston, who holds numerous age-group world records. He didn’t begin running until he was 55 and, like many other people, he started running to whip himself into better shape (in his case, to play squash). He was a Shakespearean actor and professional singer, with a runner lurking inside him, just as one lurks inside all of us. John began entering 10K races as a lark and found that, for
R
unning isn’t like most other activities. Do it, then do it some more, and you can become decent at it. Do it a lot more, and you can probably become above average. But, you may ask, what kind of an athlete could I pos-
sibly have trapped inside of me? Consider the fact that there are blind runners (some of whom
can run a marathon in under 3 hours), runners who are amputees (one gal not long ago ran a marathon in 3:05 as a below-the-knee amputee), runners with diabetes (who greatly benefit in controlling their disease through exercise), 85-year-old runners, and people who used to be runners who take it up again later in life who are changed forever by the rediscovery of how simple yet profound the act of running is. This is about walking out the door and meeting your athlete. Go
out there and spend some quality time with your new best friend, the athlete that was trapped inside you, the primitive eons-old run- ner who wants out, the essential runner ready and eager to reveal aspects of yourself that have long been repressed. Millions of runners ply the world’s highways and byways. They
weren’t always runners, except in the relatively rare instance in which they ran track and field or cross-country during their school days and continued to do so after graduation. Go to any local 5K race and hang around after the race is over and talk to a group of
40 canfitpro MARCH/APRIL 2011
his age, he was pretty good. Through dedication and hard work he became ever better and began setting records for his age. An aspect to consider with running, at least if you wish to race, is competition— against other runners and against yourself. Age-group competition occurs within the larger race; beyond that is competition against yourself, which involves setting PRs (personal records), trying to run faster and better than you did last week. But getting back to John Keston and his fully emerged runner:
From Timeless Running Wisdom By Richard Benyo Copyright © 2011 by Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc. Excerpted by permission of Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL. Available to order from Human Kinetics Canada at
www.HumanKinetics.com or by calling 1-800-465-7301.
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