I don ’ t want to be the person who lives an ordinary life . So I run away from it . All of it .
physical being . Because we live through our bodies . So when I run slower than I want or than I used to , when I don ’ t feel fast , my confidence wavers . I don ’ t post any pictures on social media and don ’ t even tell anyone I ran a race . I don ’ t feel like I have achieved . I drive home by myself and overanalyse what just happened . I want to be left alone .
Of course , I can choose to be confident or not . A person ’ s confidence shouldn ’ t be tied to how fast a race is run . We are not destined to let trivial things define who we are . That we often do may reveal a flaw in our design . Or it may reveal one of the cleverest characteristics that distinguish humans from all other animals – the urge to be better . No matter how fast or slow we are today , we all have the ability to decide we will try harder , to be better tomorrow , to affect our destiny . That ’ s why runners are so special – because we have an acutely measurable way to know where we are now and we make the decision to try to be better tomorrow . Every runner , whether a twenty-five-year-old worldrecord holder or an eighty-five-year-old who finishes last in the race – wants to be faster , wants to strive for some better version of him or herself . That is our destiny .
But it ’ s not that simple . I can ’ t say that I ’ m running solely because I want to get faster . I do , but that ’ s not the entire reason . That ’ s not what gets me out the door every day to run . I suppose , when I think hard enough about it , I am running away from something . I ’ m running away from becoming the person I don ’ t want to be . I don ’ t want to be that overweight , slow , out-of-shape lazy guy who sits in his La-Z-Boy chair or on a sports bar stool and watches football all day Sunday in his undershirt . I don ’ t want to be the middle-aged man who looks himself in the mirror and wonders where the good-looking high school athlete went , deciding to run a marathon to cure his mid-life crisis . I don ’ t want to be the person who takes the easy way out and never challenges himself . I don ’ t want to be the person who lives an ordinary life . So I run away from it . All of it . I run away from becoming lazy . I run away from the guilt of not running . I run away from a bad race I had last weekend . I run away from becoming normal and ordinary . I run away from all of the things I don ’ t like about myself . I run away from complacency .
This is an excerpt from The Inner Runner by Jason Karp . To order a signed copy , go to run-fit . com / books or order from amazon . com
Jason Karp , PhD is one of America ’ s foremost running experts , bestselling author , exercise physiologist , and creator of the REVO 2
LUTION RUNNING™ certification . The founder of Run- Fit , he was the 2011 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year and 2014 recipient of the President ’ s Council on Fitness , Sports , & Nutrition Community Leadership Award . run-fit . com
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