I am a horrible runner, but I am a great cheerleader

Living Happy Even Though I'm Broken

My whole life I’ve wanted to run marathons. This is hard to tell when you look at me right now, probably in the height of my de-conditioning. I usually make it to 13 miles before my body breaks down. My knees will tear. My plantar fascia will rage. My hip will stop working.

For years, I started over again.

And broke again.

I worry sometimes that this isn’t just about running goals, but also about relationships, about lifestyle, about leadership. How do you keep moving forward when life pushes you back in big and small ways? How do you become healthy and happy? What is the secret?

That’s why I started this newsletter really. I wanted to understand how to move forward.

This weekend our town hosted a marathon that brought hundreds of runners together to race up the hilly roads of our island. It was and is always one of my favorite events. I’ve often reported on it. I’ve often volunteered at it.

This go-around I spent a little more time thinking about why it is that I love it so much.

Is it because the runners work so hard and dream so big to train and run the event?

Yes. There’s this beautiful level of human spirit that happens there—of dedication and perseverance that is celebrated and right there in every footfall.

Is it because an entire community (nonprofits, high school teams, businesses) head out at mile markers, setting up tables, handing out water and Gatorade, cheering people on, making eye contact, reaching out and noticing as each runner passes by.

I think that’s really what gets me.

For the hours of this marathon, people are seen, people are cheered and encouraged. Their eyes meet the eyes of the encouragers and runner after runner says, “Thank you.”

There is no politics here. There are no diatribes, no censoring, no subjectively telling people that you agree with them or not. It’s just people.

People cheering people.

It’s a litany of footfalls and smiles, water grabbed, Gatorade sucked down, and then more footfalls and calls of “thank you,” and “good job” and “you’re doing great” and “you’ve got this.” Over and over again.

There was a big Harvard study that looked at over 250 of its students, starting in way back times or 1938.

The study watched these men for their entire lives. President John F. Kennedy was one of them. Another was an editor of the Washington Post.

Eventually, in the 1970s they added 456 young men from Boston’s inner city. Then the original group’s offspring was studied.

It was a lot of studying across a lot of decades and eventually the head investigator, Dr. George Valliant wrote a book, Aging Well, all about it. The study was very male dominated until 2002 or so and it was also overwhelmingly white. They kept asking the participants the same questions and found people aligned in one of four quadrants:

1.     Happy and healthy

2.     Happy and unhealthy

3.     Unhappy and healthy

4.     Unhappy and unhealthy.

They looked at what predicted people ending up in that first category: happy and healthy.

They found taking care of your body really helps you. Not using drugs or tobacco or weighing too much, not abusing alcohol, getting exercise and sleep are the foundations of physical wellbeing.

But also important was that the more connected you feel to others, the happier and healthier you tend to stay. Casual connections and close connections both help. Those moments at the marathon? They help. That’s because a marathon is more than one runner, more than one volunteer. It’s a community of humans being human in the best ways that we can be.

This weekend I had moments where I was set back pretty hard and not in the running way. Then one person I adore told me about when they tried to kill themselves a long time ago. Another person who I admire sent me a Facebook message asking for help because they needed some empathy and thought I might be able to give it.

How lucky am I to have those moments? So lucky. Those moments were both about pain (unlike the joy of the race), but they made me have a deeper, richer connection with both of those people: one who has journeyed through so much and one who is journeying through.

Let me tell you how lucky I am. I’m lucky as hell.

I am a horrible runner even when I’m at my best, but that’s okay. It’s okay because I’m a pretty good cheerleader and that’s important, too.

There are a couple resources here and here about cultivating connections, more authentic connections, richer connections. Stay strong, okay? All of you. We need you here.

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