simonlife

I’ve given up. I’ve tried running as a means of exercise for about four years now (albeit very irregularly), but it just doesn’t do it for me. It’s so boring. Someone who runs regularly needs to explain to me how they keep from getting bored while making their rounds, because so far, I’m convinced that playing some kind of sport or dancing is a superior alternative.

Ok, first, I shall try to dismiss this effrontery of mine and reason about this objectively; boredom is simply my own experience with running, after all. So why do people run in the first place?

• To exercise the body (with weight loss or other goals in mind).
• To get outdoors for a breath of fresh air.
• To achieve a sense of accomplishment.
• To relieve stress and expunge worrisome thoughts and concerns.

These are compelling points. I will attempt to extract from them some principal reason for choosing to run or jog rather than play something like soccer or tennis.

Running is a great way to stay in shape and improve one’s physical fitness and cardiovascular health. It can reduce the risk of some diseases and can help prevent the occurrence of a stroke.

Fair enough, but I think arguments like this are meant to highlight the benefits of running when juxtaposed with the complete absence of aerobic exercise. Obviously, some sort of exercise is better that none. However, there are sports and other physical activities that will provide the exercise the body needs and that will utilize a wider range of muscle groups and mental faculties. Almost every sport I can think of will do a better job of improving one’s spatial awareness, agility, and reflexes than running. Granted, sports come with the risk of physical injury, but appropriate measures can be taken to reduce these risks (i.e. adequate stretching or agreeing to play casual, “friendly” games or matches).

Running will get you out of the stuffy confines of your office and out into the open, where the air is clear and fresh.

Sports will too.

There’s a bug about running that you catch. It could be the exhilaration of propelling your body through space, or the pounding on the ground that sends sensation up your bones all the way to the pleasure centers in your brain, or it could simply be the sheer satisfaction of having done something good for yourself.

Even I know how good it feels to finish a three or four mile run. Nonetheless, this seems to be a subjective matter of how one personally defines accomplishment, and I personally feel more accomplished after breaking or playing tennis for two hours than I ever have after running.

Running will put the mind at ease. It gives you time to reflect on the things that are bothering you, or conversely, it can also help to take your mind off those very same concerns. Also, if you like, you can do it alone and throw on a pair of headphones with an MP3 player and be perfectly at peace with the road in front of you.

This is the argument I have the most trouble refuting. Most sports will help you keep your mind off of your worries, but they won’t allow you to do the opposite and reflect on them (unless you multi-task with superhuman capacity). Because of how much attention and focus they require, sports leave almost no room for any concurrent thoughts about trouble at work, academic stresses, or the super cute girl I witnessed leaving my apartment building yesterday at 5:03 PM who stumbled on the doorstep and oh my God, how cute is that?

Also, sports are more difficult to practice alone. Jogging is primarily a solitary activity, and perhaps it is the runner’s solitude that is so appealing. Everyone needs both exercise and some amount of “alone time”, which are not at all mutually exclusive, and so maybe solitary runners just choose to consolidate the two needs as one activity. After all, a busy life sometimes requires scheduling two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Make of that argument what you will; whatever the case, it seems to me that, when physical activity is concerned, there is added value in focusing the mind and body on the same task. When I play tennis, I’m constantly analyzing the physical state of the court, the other player, and the ball, and formulating a plan for how to move and recoil my arm and position my feet so that my ultimate stroke results in some collectively efficacious pattern of muscle contractions in my body. After years of playing, these actions have become automatic, but they still require cognitive processing and a generalizable form of spatial problem solving. I think that’s important.

Well, this is certainly frustrating. As with so many things, I must concede that this is yet another “to each, his own” kind of debate. Whether or not people who jog are actually mentally engaged while they run, there is something peculiar about the particular form of exercise that keeps them hooked (and it better not be runner’s high). I imagine it has something to do with the freedom to be alone or to let the conscious mind essentially do whatever it wants to while the rest of the body occupies itself with a strenuous workout.

Whatever the case, running still bores me, and I find it to be an ineffective use of my time.