Health & Fitness
Jill Miller Blog: What Runners Hate. And Love.
This is a blog on post-modern manners - and sometimes running.
This past week at the beginning of a meeting, a woman I know only slightly confronted me asking why runners "insist" on running in the street. The question had a tone. I know this tone. After 25 years of distance running, this tone is very familiar to me. Not-quite-hostile but definitely adversarial, it used to put me off. Now, I consider the source. I doubt this person could run a city block and my running acts as referendum on their own level of fitness. It's almost as though every time I slide my feet into my running shoes, I am judging them for not doing the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. Personally, I have enough trouble keeping up with my own fitness and weight maintainance to busy-body with someone else's issues.
But the encounter got me to thinking about runners and the general public's ideas about them. First, let me qualify everything that comes next by telling you that anyone who engages in a particular sport in a reverant way is a little bit odd and I count myself among the oddballs. It is my belief that most distance runners are inherently unhappy people. Running allows them to re-work their attitudes into a more contented state. What follows is a brief—and I hope enlightening- look into the minds of those who insist on running in the street, in no order of importance.
WHAT RUNNERS HATE:
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Uneven sidewalks.
Heat
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Humidity
Heat and Humidity
Large Mean Dogs
Small Mean Dogs
People who yell at us to go faster
People who yell at us
The Watch
Skunks
Lightning
Too few porta-potties
Icy Roads
Vision-Impaired Drivers
WHAT RUNNERS LOVE:
Lawn Sprinklers in July and August
Fifty-Five Degrees Farenheit
Low Humidity
Spring
Fall
Winter
Large Friendly Dogs
Small Friendly Dogs
Cold Canteloupe
Many porta-potties
5:30am
5:30pm
Pasta
Beer
The Bed
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