Distance running is the kind of sport that chooses its participants.
Most serious collegiate distance runners found themselves immersed in cross country after they discovered that they could run faster and longer than everyone else at their high school.
They didn?t want to run and they didn?t like the sport when they first began. And although the sport did grow on them, a vast majority of these runners secretly wished that their talents offered them something more fun, like basketball or soccer.
When many collegiate runners graduate this spring, they will quit running because they will find that their fleet feet can?t help them in the ways that they used to.
Running scholarships will no longer aid them in paying for college, so they won?t bother hitting the roads.
Speaking as a former collegiate runner, I can?t blame those who fall off the sport. It?s easy to leave the running world with a sour taste in one?s mouth.
Runners are almost never happy. I can pinpoint only three times in my six-year running career during which I was marginally elated with my performance.
It?s the nature of the sport. Runners are excessive compulsives and they demand unobtainable excellence at all times.
So if running won?t pay for anything after college and if runners are never happy, why do older people continue to run along the asphalt path that parallels UCI?
Why do they choose to make running a part of their golden years?
Until very recently, I couldn?t answer this question. I was baffled by a person?s choice to run after age 22.
Baffled, that is, until I interviewed a 56-year-old elite Masters marathon runner named Hal Goforth.
After speaking with Hal, I realized that the reason people stay in the sport isn?t because they want money, personal glory or trophies.
But rather, people continue to run because of the unique friendships they develop with other runners.
A running relationship is unlike any other.
It is the kind of bond that is created out of a mutual desire to undergo extreme heat, pain and bodily pounding. A tacit respect arises between two running partners with every mile that they traverse. If you were a distance runner, you?d know.
It?s hard not to admire a person who is going through the same excruciating pain that you are.
I was lead to my theory after Hal recounted a friendship that he had developed in the late ?70s with a woman named Sue Kren.
Shortly after he met Sue, Hal became her training partner and coach.
He helped Sue to finish third overall at the Boston marathon in 1979-with a time that positioned her as 25th in the world that year.
Before this race, Sue was never considered an elite runner.
When Sue finished her race, Hal didn?t yet know what place she had finished. He went into the basement of an office building where the Boston finishers are annually treated for injuries incurred during their struggle. He walked over to a curtain where women go to change and it was there that he saw Sue.
She ran over to him, grabbed him, started jumping up and down and hugged him. Hal started jumping too. At first, Sue didn?t say anything, but after some bouncing, she yelled, ?I got third! I got third!? She and Hal jumped some more.
Sue?s time was the third fasted time ever run by a woman in Boston.
After Boston, Sue continued training under Hal and she eventually decided to run a marathon down in the Dutch Antilles. She liked the idea of it because she could use her time there as a kind of vacation?she could go diving in the islands? pristine waters.
It was here that Sue passed away. She suffered from embolism during one of her dives.
Hal keeps a postcard from Sue that accounts the final day of her life. It had arrived in his mailbox two weeks after she had already passed on. He had been sitting in his study writing her eulogy when the mail arrived.
Hal gets teary eyed every time he recounts the story.
?In the postcard, she was describing the last day of her life and what she was going to do the next day, the dives she was going to make and how much fun it was going to be and who to say ?hi? to for her. That?s really kind of hard to take when somebody?s no longer here.?
Hal?s story reminded me of how many of my friends remain runners or former runners?it?s a good 90 percent.
When I think about it, almost every one of my closest friends that I had in both high school and college was involved with running in some way.
Running with another person simply creates a special bond that can never be broken. It?s the kind of thing that makes older people like Hal so eager to run hundreds of agonizing miles for no money, fame or glory.
So if you?re a runner and you?re thinking about quitting after you graduate, maybe you?ll reconsider after you realize all the special friendships that you?ll miss out on making.