you can't change running.

my brother cogito's got three kids - beavis, who's 7; regina, who's 5; and champ, who is only 5 months along. of the three, champ does the most crying and the least amount of self-propulsion. the older two have taken up, of all things, running.

beavis is a bit thinky - the kind of kid who checks out basketball books from the library to learn how to play basketball. regina is smart enough but she's the more natural athlete and learns to play sports by playing them. beavis runs like a girl. regina runs like a boy. that's just how it is.

so, they've taken up running, each in their own way.

beavis's school does this program where the kids run around the perimeter of the building and for each lap, they earn a token. the tokens add up somehow to bigger tokens or some nonsense. i really wasn't listening when cogito was explaining that part. point is, beavis did some running every day for a while and sort of caught on to the idea - one foot in front of the other and all that - and realized that it was an activity he could accomplish with reasonable success. he recognized that all the practice was having a positive affect on his skill. he's also social, so this particular program fed into his desire to be around people.

basically, with beavis, you've got an average runner who enjoys the sport for the self-improvement and socializing.

regina, on the other hand, is a machine. she's a natural athlete who doesn't concern herself with socializing, and the only improvement she's interested in is the kind that helps her win. she loves to run because it gets her places more quickly than walking and because it gets her places more quickly than other people. she hasn't done a program at school or checked a book out of the library, and yet she knows how to toe a starting line and how to fly out of the gates.

basically, with regina, you've got a superior runner who enjoys the sport for the competition.

i'm over-simplifying, of course, but what's cool is it's like this sociology experiment right there in one house. you've got a brainiac and a jock, and they have completely different approaches, but they end up in the same place - running. what's great is that they can both totally get the different things they are looking for from the same thing, from running.

you can run because you enjoy the feel of your muscles working and the conversation of your running buddies, or you can run because you like to kick ass, or it can be some of both or anything in between.

and running is fine with it, with all of it. running doesn't care. running will let you use it for any purpose you choose. running will be there for you if you want to lose yourself or if you want to find yourself. running will comfort you and running will celebrate with you. running doesn't care if you are fast or slow, tall or short, pretty or ugly. running doesn't care if you want to just whimsically flit around or if you want to compete hard - or if you sometimes want one and sometimes want the other. running doesn't even care if you love it or hate it.

running just is. you can't change running. and, i am sure you know the punchline... you can't change running, but if you will let it, running can change you.