The Running Chronicles

     Running has been an important factor in my life. Although I admit I was lazy all the way through high school, the first time I ran in the 11th grade was like love at first sight. I wasn’t too good at first and my body hurt due to my sedentary lifestyle, but as time went by I got better. Unlike Tabatha Rowley in the “Hairline Chronicles” I never felt like I associated my hair or clothing style as part of my identity. However, I can relate with Rowley in that running did help me shape the history of my identity.

     Running helped me shape my identity since it helped me battle my inner and outer issues. Running helped me work with the extreme insecurities and timidity that I had before. I used to keep to myself and be scared whenever I had to try new things, talk to people, and so forth. When I started running I started to feel livelier and less slothful, and I would talk to strangers almost automatically. I remember that my high school friends would ask me what happened to me, since I was acting in an unusual way. Running helped me improve my self esteem and started to shape the person I am today.

     By the time I graduated high school, I decided to join the military since it was something I always wanted to do and running helped me give me the confidence to choose that route. I wanted to join the army since I was a kid, but I always told myself to not even try it because I was weak. As I started running however, I was able to stop with my self-bullying and made the most important decision as an individual in my teenage years. Running helped me be the person I wanted to be by strengthening my mental fortitude, something I was looking for in a long time. Many people tend to run mostly to lose weight, ‘get in shape’, and feel sexier, but for me running was more a tool to condition my mind and spirit.

     Whenever I run today, the way I’m running usually reflects my state of being. On calm days, I tend to do long runs in a steady pace, usually in a place where there’s many trees and not much buildings and civilization around. On my stressful days, however, I tend to do sprints for a short period of time, most of the time until my legs feel like Jell-O. On the in-between days, I do in-between runs. I never allow external influences to affect my run, which is something I see all the time. A man or woman can sprint faster than anyone, some random person tries to compete with him or her, sometimes with painful results. Whenever I want to get faster or better, I tend to do it methodically so that I don’t injure myself. Running is an intermediate, in my opinion, to find an internal power that most people don’t believe they have.