Forums >General Running>When Did Running Become Your Passion?
I'm not new to running, but I'm new to the forums here at RA, so forgive me if this is a repeat thread. I looked back all the way to 2013 and did not find anything similar, so this would at least be a refresher.
I'm curious for those of you who find true passion in your running, training, racing, etc: at what moment did you decide that this is what you love to do and/or are passionate about?
Example: during the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college I was running on a gravel road in rural central North Dakota, and the air was cooling and the sun was dying down. The wind was calm and I discovered that I couldn't hear my own feet hitting the dirtless parts of the road. Being able to run and yet hear nothing made me start laughing out loud and I knew at that moment that was what I wanted.
Anybody else willing to share a moment when they knew that running would be/stay a passion of theirs?
Prairie running is peace.
That's a great story.
I'm new here too.
I don't have one definitive moment that sticks out but I started logging consistent mileage about 3 or 4 years ago and have had many moments while running the hilly country roads around my house where the thought has popped into my head (usually on a downhill!) that, "This might be the best moment of my life." Maybe if I have the good grace to grow old, one day when I'm looking back on all of it, it will be a single moment in flight with the sun shining in my eyes and pouring sweat and unable to suppress a smile that will stand out as perfection.
The slow collection of those happy moments, where everything seems to have struck a fleeting balance, keeps me going. I can't imagine myself willingly relinquishing the possibility of coming upon that feeling again, and again.
First I wanted to answer that running slowly grew on me, but then I remembered one specific moment 12 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child. I suffered from extreme exhaustion and all-day sickness and couldn't run or do tae-bo which I took kinda seriously at the time. I ran only once or twice a week as cross training for tae-bo (I know, I know!!!). So one night I had a beautiful dream, I was running barefoot over a green hill and my heart ached when I realised, still dreaming, that I wouldn't be able to do it for months to come. And that was it, that was the moment I realised I loved running.
My passion grew slowly in the last two years since joining the Holiday streak in 2013 and keeping at it.
Looking at the blog I keep, it happened for me on July 30, 2013. That was the day that for the first time I ran more than a mile barefoot. I had been taking my time getting to there, for almost 2 months I had mostly just done lots of walking and hiking barefoot, and very short stretches of barefoot running. Obviously we're all different some, but for me there's been something wild and wonderful about learning to move through and across the world barefoot.
It didn't hurt to run that mile. Instead there was this incredible sense of rightness, that I was finally learning how to run, that finally my brain was being fed all the sensory information that evolution designed my feet to give me through all those nerves in the soles of the feet. Running finally had a sense of totality and completeness that I hadn't quite felt before in the prior years I had run.
I still have a lot to learn and that's maybe another sign that it's important to me. I love learning stuff and various things that others might consider strange or inconsequential. Every time I run, I learn a little more, even on the crappy runs where the legs don't feel good. I'll never be a great runner, but I hope to work towards becoming the best runner I can.
Sold.
I wasn't intending to do that, sell anyone on the idea of barefoot running. But I suppose I have some responsibility here to advise that if you decide to pursue barefoot running, be careful. It's not an overnight matter. Of course I don't know anything about your past or history, but if you're like most how we grow up these days, your feet may be extremely underdeveloped. It takes time and patience to develop musculature in a foot, and more time and patience to make the bones, ligaments and tendons to develop. But it can be done.
I've had 2 running-related injuries since August 2013. Last year from early August to late September my left hip flexor was very angry and upset and I would only run once a week while it calmed down. I don't think that was caused by barefoot running but by the fact that I still needed to get the glute muscles more involved in running. Last year the left hip flexor was tighter than it is currently and I still hadn't done much to address the problem of lazy glute muscles.
The other running-related injury was having my right thumb tip get grazed by a pickup truck four weeks ago, breaking the tip of the bone. But at least we can safely rule that out as being barefoot-related, except for maybe the fact that now I've got pretty strong feet, I run a lot more than I ever did, so more time on the road and finally I encountered a driver who didn't notice me or see fit to give me any extra room. Yeah, I should have dived to the side, but I had never had a car never give me extra room before. And things happen fast when a car comes at you around 45 mph.
It takes time. Patience is definitely a virtue.
I don't know. I had always loved running as a kid. I was fast and it was my thing. I can still picture the two boys in my second grade class that were faster than me (I had a crush on one of them). Recently I was thinking about the days I spent sprinting in high school. It was sort of animalistic. I didn't know anything about the sport, about the meets or conferences or much of what was going on other than the events that I ran and I did what the coach told me to do in practice. I just went out there to sprint as fast as I could. I hated training at any sort of distance. More than half a mile got an eye roll. But then there was another boy in high school, a runner, that took me out for 3, 4, 5 mile runs and I liked it. His dad ran marathons. It wasn't my passion but I would run like that a couple times a week into college and after, usually alone, occasionally with a friend, with no real goals or anything. I studied exercise and sport science in college, loved physiology and figuring all that stuff out. I think the thing is that I needed to learn how to have passion first, how to have a passion for something. How to focus and grind at something that I wasn't very good at but realized I could get better if I kept after it and cared and found different angles and ways of approaching it. Before running it was reading and studying books, before that medical school. I feel like running has always been waiting for me, waiting for a day I would wake up and be ready. I don't know when, but sometime in the last couple of years the passion has come and I knew what to do with it when it got here.
Point taken. :-)
I wasn't intending to ... sell... glute muscles...was having my right thumb tip get grazed by a pickup truck four weeks ago.. It takes time.
I wasn't intending to ... sell... glute muscles...was having my right thumb tip get grazed by a pickup truck four weeks ago..
It takes time.
Funky Kicks 2019
I learned to love running from my dog. I ran in high school, but wasn't very good at it. I partied in college and didn't run much at all. After college I ran with my partner but it always had an unpleasant competitive edge (my fault not his) and anyway he way outclassed me so we would get done with an eight miler and he would barely be tired while I was at the end of my rope. After that I ran alone but it was pretty easy to talk myself out of it so I was kinda inconsistent and never really did more than 25 miles per week on a good week.
Then I got a German shepherd puppy. For the first year we just walked together, and I admit I was head over heels in love with my little dude. He was my first dog so it was really cool to see how he learned by experiencing the world. The first time I started to run with him, it was partly because he had terrible leash manners and was always pulling just enough to be annoying. But when I jogged, he fell in at my side and it was like we were meant to be running partners.
Over the next year we trained together and I found myself never skipping a workout because that would mean depriving Niko of his run, which he was clearly excited to do every day. And eventually I got to the point of wanting to keep on going after I knew he should stop. Now I take him for his run, then go back out for more.
A couple years ago I got a tattoo of the two of us running together through a forest. I know I won't have my boy forever (he is 6 years old now) but I never want to forget the purity of his joy in movement. When all that exists is the trail, and the air in our lungs, and our legs. I never would have learned that on my own.
Leah, mother of dogs
Third year of college. It's funny because I didn't work for the first two years and was very lazy...
And then I took a full-time internship whilst studying in year 3. So I had less time and yet, I felt more driven than ever and started running in the gym. The treadmill was ok but I started running outside - which in Scotland can be tricky - but loved it. I was hooked until I started working my first job post college. Then I fell out of love and only since grad school have I got back into running. Now I run 50km a week and love the sport (among many others).
Legend Running Accessories
No more marathons
Hmmmm!. Guess I'm still waiting for that moment. For now it's mostly a habit, and a way to keep fit that best fits my schedule.
Boston 2014 - a 33 year journey
Lordy, I hope there are tapes.
He's a leaker!
Sayhey! MM#130
Hiya Nate! I used to live and run in South Dakota a few years back. In fact, I think that's where the "passion" happened. I say I think as it wasn't an "aha" epiphany for me. I'd liken it to one of those relationships where you're really good friends.....and gradually realize that it's become more than a friendship. I'd run all my life, playing on the streets when a kid, in sports, and then regular running. In 2003, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sometime later that year, after a double mastectomy, I ran my first marathon. Not too long after that, I of course managed to injure myself running. And couldn't run. It was then I realized how much I missed running. I was greenly jealous every time I saw someone running. When I was finally healed enough to run a few slow distances on a treadmill, I found tears streaming down my face. Then I ran Boston in 2004 and cried again, repeatedly. Yeah, I'm that corny. The volunteers kept asking me if I was OK (it was hot that year) and I had to reassure them I was fine, it was just that I was running Boston, and wasn't that some kind of wonderful?
It (running) really is, too. That wonderful.
https://agratefullifedotnet.wordpress.com/ (for a piece or two of my mind)
KillJoyFuckStick
+1
You people have issues
When I was running with Walter Payton in the 70s. Whenever I run I remember how that felt.
It took a long time to earn his respect but I remember the day.
Consistently Slow
Ran XC for 2 years in high school. Did not start back until 1989. 16 yrs later.
Run until the trail runs out.
SCHEDULE 2016--
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
http://bkclay.blogspot.com/