Why We Run #11: Control

Control freak or not, we all need something we know we definitely have control over.

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I think that control freaks are naturally attracted to running.

I think this because I am one and I know some.

I discovered running almost on a dare.  It quickly started to feel like an efficient way to self-impose a challenge that could ultimately bring the pure satisfaction of competing by and against myself.  I envisioned harnessing discipline to conquer any obstacle.  I would gain a suberb sense of control.  I would be in control.

Looking back, it is this desperation for control that drove me toward running.  Desperation for control over my health, my body, my brain, my life.

In the last five years that running has become a part of me, it has provided gifts and taken away burdens that are tallied only in my steady pace and my fixed gaze.  Running has been both a cruel and a kind teacher, a merciless and a forgiving pursuit, a moving target and a solid source of measureable progress.

Achievements of distance and time have been most often celebrated internally.  I have learned how to celebrate the intangible, the less obvious, the most secretive of progress.  Struggle, pain, resolution are accomplished simultaneously like a rolling boil, tumbling and re-tumbling over one another.  Insecurities, worries and frets take shape like bubbles that rise to the surface of melting skin in the summer desert heat, and spill over and over.  There is no holding back, there is only resignation, and release, and bearing witness.   It is the revelation and exposure of the messiness, the dirtiness, and the dinginess in the darkest corners.  It is an utter loss of control.

It’s not clear if it is the labored breathing or the arms pumping or the psychological battles that keeps my legs churning, mile after mile.

What is clear is that I can purge, I can push, I can squeeze out what plagues me, what would otherwise bring me to my knees but instead pours out of me in beads of sweat and grunts and yells and pounding.

Self-imposing a loss of control with each run has become in its own way, a vehicle for what ails me to leave my body and my mind.

I am not blindly in love with running, it is no savior in and of itself.  It is not a friend nor a foe.  It is not even a constant.  It waxes and wanes with busyness, illness, energy, time and commitment.  Running both cheers me on and gives me a harsh talking-to.  Running offers itself to me, always generously standing at the ready, and willing to wedge itself into the crevasses, prying open and making available the vulnerable and meaty core.  Always ten steps ahead, or .3 of a mile, or the next stop sign is where it never fails and I uncover another burst of energy, another reason to keep churning, a truth that has just been revealed.  Running hasn’t given me what I thought it would give me.

There is no control in moving forward.

There is only pacing myself, breathing in rhythm, and trying to sing out loud.

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 #10: Pushing Myself Into Constant Motion <<  >> #12: Of Habits and Addiction

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