A Craving

Good stories can be boiled down into two ingredients: friction and rhythm. Friction is necessary because, alas, only trouble is interesting. Rhythm is the order we impose on chaos, the formal clarity that allows us to know, if only for a few minutes, what we think and feel, and what we want from the world.

Long runs contain plenty of literal friction (thank you vaseline for addressing this delicate issue). But friction is also intangible. I happen to not mind it when someone calls me crazy after I explain that Im moving a little slow because I ran 23 miles before most people roused from their pillows. It gives me justification for the trials I put my body through, for how truly crazy would I be if I did not rise at the crack of dawn to clock my double digits?

The question of suffering comes up often when you discuss running with those who don't care for it. These people assume that discomfort is compounded by the mile. How to convince them that, in fact, the opposite is true, that there are gains not realized in shorter runs? Time, for one - unfettered time, free from all the technological intrusions that have altered the rhythm of our existence and increased, for many of us, friction. Time to work out your problems. Time to listen. Every run has its own sound track, but long runs are symphonic: The rustle of wind through bare autumn trees, the train a mile away through the swamp, the thrum of an interstate so insulated from the green tunnel of a tow-path that it could well be the sea. And there is the internal rhythm to consider, the way it leaves your body feeling exhausted but sublimely sated, as if the time you spent in rhythmic friction had answered a question you did not even know you had.

Sometimes, I'm lucky enough to settle into that state called a "runners high", though that name fails to capture its beauty. What happens to the body and mind when you go long is, like all of life's rewarding treasures, a mystery, and its value is commensurate with its mysteriousness. If I knew exactly why and how a 20-miler worked its magic, I might not treasure it as dearly.