WHY I RUN

I don't remember the date exactly, but the scenario is still in my mind, possibly because I've told this story many times.

The place was possibly Thomson House, the graduate student pub/lounge at McGill University. And amidst the drinks, chatting with this guy from Trinidad (I forget his name, but it may come back later), he bragged about how much training he'd been doing and was entering the Montreal Marathon that Sunday. This was a Friday night.

As a Kenyan, I may have said that we are natural runners, we don't need to train, even though that's way far from the actual truth. The percentage of natural Kenyan elite runners are a tiny minority in the country and nearly all of them come from the Kalenjin tribe. There's the odd exception, but it's mostly Kalenjin.

This guy was not the smallest, lightest person, in fact he looked like a body builder. With a muscular build, heavy top and power legs. If you look closely at marathon runners, they're light, small and skinny. Not big at all. The current world record holder, Eliud Kipchoge is probably about 120 lbs. I heard a news reporter once refer to Tegla Laroupe as a Volkswagen with a Mercedes engine. Tegla is way under 100 lbs. Anyway, the discussion moved into an argument, in good humour, where he told me that there was no way I could run a marathon without training. My response to this was that if he could run one, then so could I. And that's how it rolled out.

Armed with the sign-up information, I went to register the next morning (Saturday) with the king of hangovers. But this is why ignorance is so powerful as a force. Your mind is a super powerful force which can make you fearless. It's a function of both knowledge and ignorance. With a lot of knowledge you can forge forth confidently, aware of anything that could come at you. Similarly, armed with ignorance, you're unaware of obstacles that could inadvertently make you fearful, and therefore fail.

I didn't know anything about pacing myself. Nothing about the famous Wall. Nothing about staying hydrated. All I knew was that if this guy could run, with all that bulk (even though it was muscle), then so could I.

I think I did the first 10k fairly well. Full of energy and strength, burning pure alcohol from two days ago. I had a light meal the day before since I did not know anything about carbo-loading. I was passing everyone left right and centre. And when someone passed me, I took that as a challenge and tried to keep up. That was a big mistake, and I've since learned to leave people to their own race - and, subsequently, run my own race. My trouble may have started about half-way where I couldn't believe how I was feeling. My legs were tightening and I didn't want to stop lest I am unable to start up again. So I hobbled along. I knew my nemesis was far behind and that spurred me forward. One step at a time. One meter, one kilometre. Then I hit the famous wall. It was probably around 35k, I don't remember. But the wind came out of me and my hobbling was reduced to a painful shuffle. Still I went on. At some point I stopped looking forward as you're supposed to, and was looking down at the asphalt. At this point, everyone was passing me but I didn’t care. I just wanted to finish.

I beat him. I remember almost crying as I saw the 40k mark, then the 41k then 42k and only 200m to go. I crossed the finish line in possibly my worst finish in any marathon subsequently, 4 hours and about 15 minutes. It was definitely over 4 hours, and less than 4:30. I learned a lot about myself that day. That pride can make me do anything. That competition is important, but how you go about it is even more important. That planning and preparing is the most important thing you can do, and that race day is just icing. It's all about the training. While I beat him, I didn't gloat, there was no gloating bone in my body. In hindsight, I may have felt bad about even having had that discussion in the first place. I should have let it go and not taken up the challenge.

When I woke up the next morning, the soles of my feet, specifically the ball of the foot near the heel felt so tender, I thought I may have fractured my foot. I tried to hobble to school, but the pain was too much and later in the morning I went to the hospital for a check-up. They told me that the foot was not fractured, but possibly muscle and ligament trauma from the pounding. Since this was my first marathon, they told me to ice the foot, try to stay off it and it will recover. I learnt that running shoes are a very important part of marathons.

Since that race, I've run possibly 30 marathons. I lost count. Most of them have been good, but there've been a few doozies. I've crossed the half-way mark at the Ottawa marathon in 1:10, that's elite time. But I finished that race in 3 hours, which means that the last half was run in 1:50. Lesson learned. Got better in subsequent races, finishing comfortably. And only one time did I wake up and not show up at the start line - I knew instinctively I couldn't finish. That's experience.

Training for a marathon is a lonely activity. Elite runners train for 150 miles each week, or roughly 240km. And one of those weekly runs is close to marathon distance (20 miles). Elite runners will train in groups and they have a coach. I trained alone, without a coach. For a time I ran with a group on specific days at the Running Room - a company based in Canada. But 99% of the time, I woke up, motivated myself and headed out of the door with only myself to mentor me. Nobody to push me on the poor days, and nobody to high-five on the really good runs. From the age of about 22 when I started running, all the way till 53, when I ran my last marathon, I learned to depend on myself.

I taught myself to be my own company, to enjoy my own company, and learned to entertain myself. I believe this is why I also write. It's a lonely, a solitary activity and mostly internal. While professional writers may have editors who will suggest structural changes to a piece of work, I really don't have any of those. I just ramble on, like now, and when I think I'm tired, I put it aside and move on to something else. Happy to have written and happy to have accomplished something. Like running, my writing is a solitary, a lonely affair.

I taught myself that the only person that I should compete with is myself. There were good runs and there were definitely bad ones. Some really bad ones where I thought I couldn't finish. I remember a marathon in the city of Hamilton where my training prior to the race took a turn for the worse and I injured my right hamstring. This is a debilitating injury and there's no running through the pain. You can try to grin and bear it, but the pain feels like a knife jammed into the back of your leg scraping the bone and tearing apart the joint. At least to me that's what it felt like. So I halted my training, thinking that as long as I rested, I had done enough to enter the race and complete, at least in an honourable time. However, a week before the race, I knew that it would be impossible, so I changed my entry from the full marathon to the half marathon. I was confident that I could grin and bear the pain of 21.1 kilometres. Boy was I wrong. I started slowly, feeling my leg, making sure that I stepped tenderly and not too aggressively on that leg. But I soon forgot when my leg warmed up and at about 5k into the race, I felt a twinge on the back of the leg and my right leg gave up. It was like a guitar string breaking. I was running up a slight hill, in the middle of the hill was a water and a first aid station. I pulled into the first aid station, almost in tears, thinking that I'd ask them to drive me to the start/finish line. My race was going to be done. But after I was massaged, I thought that I should just walk/run to the finish line. Yes, the time would be awful, but at least I would be able to finish the race. So that's what I did, when the pain went down a little, I hobbled for a few metres, literally two or three, before I had to stop and walk again. 2 hours, 30 minutes later, I arrived at the finish line. I wasn't last, but this was a catastrophe. Had this been a full marathon, I would not have finished, even in six or seven hours.

The Hamilton even taught me something about not seeking the approval of others too much. Yes, it's great to get a pat on the back when you do well, but it's also good to give yourself one. I was very disappointed when I got home, didn't even look at the finishers' medal, just put it away and sulked. But why was I feeling this way? After all, I'd finished and that was the point. I was sad because I knew that I could have done better. If my leg had behaved, I could even have done an acceptable 2 hour finish. I thought I'd done everything right leading up to the race. I was training well and resting well. Although the injury had been there on and off, and hadn't fully healed, I thought I could get away with full training, and that the training would eventually win over the injury. It was not to be so. I ended up injured and disappointed, and what my body told me was that there were things that even when nobody else was involved, could still go wrong. Things that I would own totally, without blaming anyone else's incompetence or negligence that I could not control. My leg told me that I needed to take time to myself, to heal, to learn about my body and respect it.

I lead a solitary life with few friends that I hang out with. I had a good friend in high school when I was in London - David Beldon. Don't know where he ended up, but he was an outcast at Brookland Junior School in Hampstead Garden Suburb where I studied from 1974 to 1977. We were bullied together, a black kid (obvious racism) and David, just a nerd who dreamed of becoming a musician. Naturally we attached and spent time outside class just chatting. David taught me how to bite my nails, a habit that has taken a lifetime to remove. High school in Kenya wasn't any better and I made few friends, spending time with neighbours instead. And in University, while I may have had a friend or two, they mostly disappeared after graduation. I have learned to spend a lot of time alone and try to spend it effectively. Running started as a way to lose weight, but went on to become a meditative part of my life. And while I don't run now, knees need to be saved for future walking, I have learned to be alone and not have to get my energy from crowds.

Marathons have taught me that it's about the journey, not the finish line. Finish lines are awesome, but they are only achieved via a good journey. To be cliched, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. A marathon teaches you to concentrate on that single step. A building of a hundred storeys begins with a single brick.  A marathon teaches you to concentrate on that single brick. A novel of four-hundred pages begins with a single word. A marathon teaches you to concentrate on the single word.

I put away my running shoes in 2018. The last real race I did was the Streetsville Bread and Honey race (15k). My daughter ran the 5k admirably. To say I suffered in that race would be an understatement, and I finished in about 1 hour 27 minutes. Not so good, but I finished and was happy with the run. But I think that three years is enough of a wait, so jogging will start again in 2022. Slow 5k runs on a daily basis, not to shock my knees, but to meditate. It's very important for me to get that breath. It's like mindfulness meditation which I practice with difficulty since it requires me to sit still and mostly what I do is worry about wasting time while I'm sitting still. But I still do it.

I am comfortable with how life is proceeding and I'm comfortable being alone without a crowd of friends. I worry less about what people think about me, but worry about aging and not being able to take care of myself. I worry about the fact that sooner than later, I'll need to depend on others for some of the things I used to do and take for granted. But until that time comes, I will continue to use the lessons from running marathons, patience, pacing, self-awareness, non-competitiveness, continuous improvement, self-dependence in all aspects of my life. Right now, they are working wonderfully as I write daily.