runtothere

Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, in "The Old Fisherman", addresses the hopes of enhancing one's merit and fame. What runner doesn't relate to that first part? (Some say the second, too?!) The illustration he gives of the vices that can ensue from the incorrect way of pursuing these goals is of a man so afraid of his own shadow that he runs to escape it: of course, to no avail ( 4 ). The lesson is that any man who neglects to improve himself will be bound to expend energy in such a doomed, needless way. But what is this elusive "right way", I wonder, if improvement functions on several levels (physical, mental, dispositional, etc). I think sometimes I live my life in such a way that I do everything wrong the first time round, throwing myself into something, learning along the way. I am not like Murakami, who, before taking up running, read about it. To my mind, my "right way" was more complex: I was first running to keep running, because I was going t...

The running corner of the internet that I frequent seems to be getting more expensive. I decided, in response, to write a paean to Nike's budget-friendly running shoe, the Pegasus Zoom 33. It almost functions as a trail shoe, too - which is to say: I fell in them once, when the traction just wasn't there over a big rock. But for merely root-knotted trail, they are fine. They are great on non-technical trail. They are great on cement, which is largely what I run on, to get to trail. I have run months of weeks over 60 miles in them, and am now doing marathon training in the same pair. And I am amazed that the soles still look almost brand new. Perhaps best of all is that they can handle some ice. I tried to find other reviews on the internet that would tell me how they would perform on ice, but to limited avail: I only learned that they can handle ice where there is some traction from some snow. My winter here has been snow that turns to ice. So, when the sun was powerful eno...

"Man shares a great deal with the other animals, whose enjoyment of play can astonish us - so much so that anyone who observes and studies animal behaviour ... is overcome by a feeling of delight coupled by horror. ... So overwhelming was the impact of Descartes' central insight ... animals [then mankind] were simply considered to be automata ... enthusiasm [of free will] has utterly disappeared." - Hans Georg Gadamer, "The Play of Art" I think that runners can feel the delight and horror of free will: the delight at the breeze and the views, the horror at the pain on a return from a long out and back. To be a runner is also to play at something, to take Gadamer's definition where the freedom of play is most visible in art: in art and running, humans try things out, reject things, create - and what is made through this effort is hardly determined by ultility. When was the last time you spent three hours on a treadmill since the roads were iced over and sa...