I’ve started running, inspired in part by an article in Runner’s World. The gist of the article was that getting out, working up a bit of a sweat and coming back again is the goal; whether you spent some or even most of that time walking is your business.
Maybe you’ve known that for years, in which case you’ve probably progressed to triathlete status and have your own endorsement deal with a sports drink maker, and more power to you.
But the rest of us carry around some sense of obligation that if you strap on a pair of running shoes, you had damn well better run in them. Anything less isn’t worth doing.
It’s easy to get trapped in that mindset with just about anything. Yeah, you could take up painting, but deep down you’d never be brilliant at it. I could write a novel, but it would never qualify as great literature. And so we never do.
Which is actually more than a little dumb. Set aside the question of whether those doubts are well-founded. Why assume that we have to excel at something to make it worthwhile?
It’s the Star Trek fallacy. (Bear with me for a sec.) One of the show’s memes (especially in Next Generation) is a near-mystical reverence for the captain’s chair and the thrill of command. It seemed there wasn’t a single character on the show who didn’t have some kind of ambition in that direction.
The two exceptions:
- Miles O’Brien, who started a family and left for Deep Space Nine. Figure he wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t so career-crazy?
- And Wesley Crusher, who dropped out of the whole Starfleet rat-race altogether to transcend human existence, time and space.
But there are things that are well worth doing, even if you can’t be the best, great or even noticeably good at them. And while we generally recognize that fact in many areas of our lives, sports and the arts seem to be exceptions.
So now I’m doing a workout that won’t put any Olympic records at risk… but that will get me out into the Endowment Lands, and will get my pulse pounding the way it ought to at least three times a week. Ten minutes of warmup, then I get into a rhythm: two minutes running, one minute walking, for the next fifteen to twenty minutes. Then it’s another five to ten minutes of cooling down and stretching.
And that’s it. For now.
I have ambitions. Like being able to run comfortably for half an hour at a stretch. And doing one of those fun runs — or even a marathon — sometime next year.
But in the meantime, I’ll settle for making modest progress. The time may come when I’ll strive for something more, but until then, I think Miles O’Brien had the right idea.
