Why we love to run?

"Dad, where are you going?" - asked me recently, my little son, I laced my running shoes in the cold and wet Sunday morning. "Run." - I replied. "Why?" - he asked me.

Adharanand Finn, Assistant production «Guardian» editor and writer, wrote a special article for «The running blog», in which he confesses his love to run and tries to convey all the emotions runners. And it is, admittedly, great work!

"Dad, where are you going?" - asked me recently, my little son, I laced my running shoes in the cold and wet Sunday morning. "Run." - I replied. "Why?" - he asked me.

He's only three years. But it was a really good question that I could answer that simple. My body has not recovered from the shock, being pulled out of the cozy bed. I was preparing for a marathon, but it was still a month. And at that moment I did not feel the need to recover critical to the street in this inhospitable winter morning. I could go out later. Or on another day. Or simply do not run a marathon. Why am I going to do to run a marathon? But something was still forced to move me. "Because it's fun" - I finally said, not very convincingly.

In fact, the truth is that it is a time when you are going for a run, is the worst time to explain to someone, or even yourself, why you're running. It just does not make sense. Running - it's hard. It takes effort. Running - it's a big, pointless circle, because after all the pain you end up in the same place where you started.

Often people tell me they can run to drive the ball. But just running, rearrange one foot in front of the other - it is too boring for them. I listen and nod, because I'm not sure that I can convince them otherwise, even if I tried. In the race there is no logic.

Of course, some people are running to lose weight, or to be tightened - all good reasons. And running - it's easy, because you can run whenever you want. And it does not need to pre-book special court or assemble a team. All these factors contribute to the fact that running - this is one of the most popular sports in the United Kingdom. According to Sport England reports more than two million people in the UK run at least once a week.

And for many of these runners 2 million real reason that they run on the road for as long as muscles do not start to burn, more intangible than the loss of excess weight and fitness. I remember as a young man, being rather zealous runner corrected people who ask me if I'm running to be in shape. I always say that to keep yourself in good physical shape in order to run.

Many runners are obsessed with time. The desire to overcome the 40-minute barrier for a 10 km run a marathon or less than 4 chasa can be a major goal. There is something reassuring in this setting goals that measure your progress in precise numbers, which are in reality is not so easy to interpret, but which in this case are distinct achievements in this unstable world. Although in reality these figures as inaccurate and random, that are practically useless. And once a person reaches their goals, followed immediately appear new.

A friend of mine runner training to run a marathon in less than 3:00. As a result, he has run it for 3 hour and 2 minutes. After that, I talked to him and I thought he must be very upset. But it turned out that it is not angry. He said he actually glad. If he had reached the goal, it would be great. And so it remains a goal and he will try his hand at next year.

No, in fact the time - this is not the reason why we are running up and down the hills, in the wind and rain, when in fact it could be in a comfortable bed or relax over a drink in the drinking pub. Time - a carrot, which we hold in front of his nose as bait. We like small Peysmeny in the pursuit of new records.

"Why do we do this to yourself?" - this is the main slogan of racing clubs across the country. I used to hear it when going to run with a group of men and women in fluorescent tops and a sense of anticipation mixed with the anticipation of pain, even though we are going to reach the most end. No one has yet given a clear answer. Because in fact it is a rhetorical question. But deep down, we all know the answer.

Running gives us pleasure. Look at how young children play. When they are passionate about the game, they can not stop running. They rush back and forth, and wind the little mindless circles. I remember, when I was already a grown child, sometimes began to run down the street for no apparent reason. There's a wonderful moment in "The Catcher in the Rye" when Holden Caulfield, hitting the unusual the space between childhood and adulthood, one night going through the school yard and suddenly He begins to run. "I do not even know why I run. I guess I just felt that way. "- he said.

The desire to run is for the human innate. In fact, perhaps, humans evolved this way and not otherwise because of its ability to run. Best-selling book by Christopher McDougall "Born to run» (Born to Run) is based on the theory developed by scientists at Harvard University, which states that humans evolved through hunting - chasing animals until they fell dead from fatigue. That is why we have the Achilles tendon, a foot in the form of an arch, a wide pelvis and occipital ligament in the back of the neck, that support our head while running. And even though Usain Bolt behind in sprinting from all the four-legged mammals when it comes to long distances, we - the Olympic champions of the animal kingdom. Our ancestors could even catch up with the fastest runners, such as antelope, if you could hold them for a long time in the field of vision.

One of the great Kenyan runners, Mike Boit, Once he told me how he was greeted in his native village after winning the 1978 Commonwealth Games. When he boasted of his medal, his childhood friend approached him and said: "It's all very well, but you can still catch the antelope?"

And while the children and teenagers can start running at a trot without a special reason, we adults can not afford to just pick up and run at any time. Therefore, we formalize the run. We have become runners. We buy equipment for jogging. We set at the nose of sweet carrots, download a variety of mobile applications, we are looking for sponsors and only then we will, at last, begin to run.

Racing along the trails or through the crowded city streets, splashing in puddles, letting the rain soak us and substituting the wind, we begin to feel this sense of a half-forgotten children's joy. And right from the depths of the soul rises this feeling of primitive and shakes us: we were not born to sit at the table, reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. We were born to a wild existence. When we run all of our layers, all the social masks we used to wear on itself in polite society (father, mother, lawyer, doctor) are broken, exposing human nature. This is a very rare thing, and it can push these two personalities. Some of us can stay, shocked by what they may be in fact, the way the heart beats and how flies forward consciousness, struggling with our attempts to leave it all behind.

But if we pull devil, and will run faster, sinking into solitude, far away from the world and the structure of our lives, we will feel strange elated, separated from everyone and at the same time related, related to a. With nothing but two legs that carry us forward, we begin to vaguely sense of who or what we are actually.

In Japan, the monks from Mount Hiei in an attempt to achieve enlightenment run marathons 1.000 per 1,000 days. One day I was standing on the road about 24 miles of the London Marathon, watching how people run one after the other. And almost every one of them was in that moment, in the place of his life, they rarely visit again. It was almost like peeking directly into their souls. Their faces were distorted grimaces and attempts to control them, and at the same time alive. Each of them after crossing the finish line of the glowing feeling of well-being. Some of them even cried (as I did after my first marathon). This is the main fable runner, but calling it so, we reduce its importance. It may just be the release of chemical active substances in the brain, but after a long run everything in this world seem right. Everything is in its place.

And these feelings are so strong that desire to feel this again leads us back again and again to get more.

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