Is There Something Wrong With Distance Runners?

by Chase Parnell September 14, 2019

Queue the lights. I was 17. I was with my mom in Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival. I was sitting at a breakfast table adorned with a white lacy tablecloth, eating fruit, yogurt, and muesli at the B&B’s communal table. A nice older gentleman joined us. He was warm, gentle, and confident. He said he was a military man. He mentioned a rank. He began to wax on about how the military made leaders out of young men like me. Aiming to impress, I told him I was a runner. He assumed a sprinter for some reason. He said team sport participants do great in the military. Relay runners form a cogent bond, he said. At boot camp, you get in sync just like that. He said sprinters excel in the military. They do great in life. Then he said it. “Long distance runners, though, not so much. Too individualistic.” I told him I was a 400-meter runner and that I did indeed run the relays. A nod of affirmation followed. I was a distance runner though, through and through. 

I am now twice the age I was when I heard those words. 17 years later and I still wonder if that old man was right. Is that what distance runners are? Too individualistic? Are we somehow bent towards failure?

If I’m being honest, I can work well with others, but I don’t typically enjoy it. I have had good experiences on a team, but I train mostly alone. I can be social and I’ve even been called a conversationalist, but I walk into a crowded room and typically cringe. 

So I have this intense desire for affirmation through athletic achievement, yet it is paired with an equally intense hesitancy to engage with the very people that would provide said affirmation. What is that?!

If you ask my parents about who I was as a kid they’ll tell you I was fiercely competitive, in everything. Sports, debate, chocolate milk chugging, and don’t even get me started on Candyland. I would win, win, win and relish every second of your pain in loss. It was insatiable.

I took a hit with puberty though. Before that, I really was this brash, confident, brave kid until I was maybe 12. Somewhere in the coming-of-age maelstrom, I went inward. I began to blush. A kid named Mike Mahoney called me tomato face. I became self-aware and uncomfortable. I’m not sure who or what hobbled my spirit, but it happened and sometimes I feel like I’m still putting the pieces back together.  

I played freshman basketball and then made the JV squad my sophomore year. But I never played a game on JV because I quit before the first official practice. I think it just stressed me out. I didn’t want the judging eyes of a coach, teammates relying on me, and people in the stands critiquing my every movement on the court. 

So instead, I double-downed on running and it became everything. There wasn’t that same pressure to perform and it’s hard to embarrass yourself in a race. There’s no epic fail. If you’re having a bad race, it’s typically just a slow fade into the background. You’re hardly noticed. Contrarily, during that year of freshman basketball, I vividly remember every airball and turnover. I remember my eyes darting to my coach whose only response was to look down and shake his head. 

I knew that everyone had those low moments in sports, even Kobe, but I couldn’t take it. So I quit and walked away. 

I don’t want to overgeneralize here because I know there are many many runners out there that don’t have this very sad wounded deer story, but I also think there are some real commonalities amongst us. 

I stumbled across a book recently, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” by Alan Sillitoe. It’s about an English teenager from the poor side of town who has very few options in life so he dabbles in petty crime. The boy turns to long distance running as a way to escape his depressed state. This book was written in 1959 and even then, the narrative existed: wayward boy with issues finds solace in running. 

I understand the general public’s fundamental inquiry: who likes to run? I have answered variations of that question ad nauseam, yet maybe I still enjoy fielding the question. And I guess there’s a bit of rebellion there too. I like that people don’t get it. We are contrarian, counter-cultural, sufferers, different. It gives us an identity in a world that, frankly, maybe we’re not that good at. 

Let’s be real, to excel in most professions there is a lot of teamwork and networking and glad-handing required. In college, group projects were the bane of my existence. Rallying the troops, delegating tasks, thinking deeply while interacting with other people…ugh. I’m typically very distracted while working with others. I need to be holed up in my cubby in the library, only me and my thoughts, only there would I see things clearly. 

I recently had an exchange with a woman, a complete stranger, where I told her I run 100 milers. She responded immediately, “You know there’s something wrong with you, right?” She was dead serious. She went on, “Do you just … hmmm, like, like suffering?” A chuckle and a shoulder shrug was all I could muster.

What I fear is that I’m really just an adult version of that same kid who didn’t like the pressures of expectation, but at the same time I’m still starving for attention. How much of my running is driven by the responses and affirmations I receive from others, however stereotypical or uninformed the comments.  

So is there something wrong with the long distance runner? Is there truth in what the old military man said to me 17 years ago? 

Let’s just say, I know I have work to do. I have predispositions and default settings that I know set me back. I’m working on it. I do believe distance runners, as a class, share some common struggles. We tend to be overly independent. We might spend an hour figuring something out ourselves that we could have learned in a minute had we asked someone. 

We seek and enjoy solitude in a state of heightened breath and rhythmic movement. Something about that feels good. We are ritualistic. We value a practice that doesn’t provide immediate rewards, but a subtle enjoyment.

Running is our lubricant of the mind and a channel into ourselves that we’ve found powerful.  

“Without self knowledge, without understanding the workings and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.” ― G.I. Gurdjieff

I certainly desire to be free. I do find freedom in running, but I also acknowledge that running is oftentimes only a temporary fix, a soothing salve for a struggle that runs much deeper. As runners, we share a common belief, I think, that as long as we keep running, things will be okay. 

And for the most part, I think that’s true.

 

---

A few people have asked us how they can support us in our work … well, here it is: Patreon allows you to give as little as $2 a month and unlock bonus content for patrons only. With your support, we are going to keep building into Treeline Journal and pitching to the world this life of endurance, passion, and freedom. If you already support us on Patreon, we cannot thank you enough.

---

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive all our latest articles, YouTube videos, and life updates in a conveniently packaged weekly email, sign up for our Rise & Grind Newsletter.

---