Tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Not only am I going to write about running, but that title is also a nod to the Boss and his performance tonight at half time. Anyways, onto the real entry.

This morning I ran the InStep 5K for Childhood Cancer (or something like that) with my friend Claire and Mike. I mostly did it because Claire is training for a half marathon and needs to get some other races in before hand. Plus, I figure I need the motivation to help me not die during the Shamrock Shuffle in March. I enjoy races, but I would never go as far to say that I actually enjoy running. I don't know that I've ever experienced the so called "runner's high." Scratch that, maybe I did once. There was a time during the summer before maybe junior year of high school when I was doing one of our summer work outs for cross country conditioning and I ran for what seemed like forever. To this day it probably sticks out in my memory as the best run of my life. I no longer remember how far I ran nor how long, but I definitely ended up down near East Avenue and not particularly sure how I got there or how to get to a less sketchy stretch of road. Anyways, that is neither here nor there and not part of my point at all.

I was reading an article in Rolling Stone the other night about Bruce Springsteen and the song Born to Run popped into my head. The song got me thinking about my running "career," and I laughed to myself because I certainly was not born to run. I'm not build to be a runner, but I keep putting myself through the torture of it. A sprained ankle during freshman year cross country left me with a bad ankle and tendinitis in my heal. An injury senior year left me with a bad knee that has never fully recovered. Over the course of running on and off in college I've got myself a second bad knee. I've recently developed a hip problem, and my physical therapist pointed out that my right hip is considerably weaker than the left. Wonderful. Oh, and did I mention I'm asthmatic? So add all those variables up, and your answer is not a runner. The smart thing to do would be to find an alternative style of exercise, but for some reason I always come back to running. While I'm running, I generally just want to kill myself. I keep going (clearly I'm not post-humanously writing this) but generally just because I don't want the people around me to think I'm pathetic at the gym. Plus, I beat myself up about not doing well.

However, there was a time when I loved to run. In grade school my favorite days of gym class were when we did relay races. Races on the playground were another favorite activity of mine. I loved it. Tag was my sort of game because you were running around. And then of course, I was that kid in 7th grade who actually told our basketball coach I really thought he should be making us run. Who tells their coach they should be running? Only a crazy child. Then, again I so badly wanted our team not to suck. Too bad that dream never came true. Oh well.

On an unrelated noted: Marquette beat Georgetown last night and is now 8-0 in the Big East. This is their best start in something like 30 years....you know what was 30 years ago? I'm not even going to tell you in fear of jinxing the team.