Why I Run

Todd Smith
8 min readFeb 6, 2014

For 25 years I searched. It wasn’t for lack of trying that it took so long. It wasn’t in Asia or Europe and I didn’t believe it would be in North America. I came close many times but was constantly left with excuses. Overweight, pigeon-toed, bone-diseased, recovering from knee surgery. Too busy, too tired, too hungry, too poor. This cycle continued for years. I loved running but I just wasn’t good at it. Then one day in the spring of 2011 my brother and his wife encouraged me to register for a 10k race.

Let’s Start Steady

The race was five months away. I went for *a few training runs and climbed 40 flights of stairs once a week, or maybe whenever I found it convenient. Without much motivation my schedule was inconsistent at best, but really, the word I’ll use is “non-existent”. A stint of poorly planned piecemeal work in the preceding weeks ensured that I did not train properly. It was an excuse. A lingering habit of the preceding 25 years, no doubt. Race day arrived and I decided to try anyways.

My timing chip beeped as I crossed the starting line. Sprinting up to the lead pack of racers in the first two kilometres I thought to myself, “This is going to be a piece of cake”, then with each step I began to fade. Three kilometres. Five. Six. I started walking. In a defeated pout I encouraged my pacers to run ahead. They declined. I insisted. Then people started passing me; grandparents, gangly tweens, a few stray dogs, and perhaps a tumbleweed. Wandering alone through the suburbs of Kelowna I considered quitting before thinking, “What have I to lose?” Having factored out the likelihood of death, exhaustion or heart-attack I decided to try once more. Eight kilometres. Nine. Hearing the announcer wail my brothers’ name as he finished in the distance, I ignored the pain in my legs and rounded the final corner into a chute of spectators. Reading the name on my chest a man stepped out and cheered, “Good work, Todd! Finish strong!” I increased my tempo, pushed my legs to the point of numbness and lumbered across the finish line.

00:59:32

It was over. Blood rushing to my head, I abruptly stopped and toppled into a volunteer gesturing a medal around my neck. I felt disgusting. Fighting the need to vomit I gulped from a water bottle with my heart beating out of my chest. This was not my best performance. With family beginning to congratulate me, I said “thanks” and felt disingenuous. I wasn’t proud of this. Never before had I struggled through something so wholly and had my physical ability fall immensely short of my expectations.

This feeling of disgust sat shotgun on my four-hour drive home. Mulling over the source of the discomfort I realized that I’d been holding back. I felt trapped by a lack of physical activity, work stress, and drama in friendships and relationships. I’d built a silly, walled-up mental resistance to challenge and this frustration with failure had arrived in my first real attempt to conquer something I’d pursued for years. This resistance had manifested in something physical. I constantly said “I’ll do it tomorrow” and scheduled a run for an arbitrary day in the future. Months would go by without running, sometimes without even going outside, sometimes without eating—or eating very poorly. For me it had become a dangerous cocktail of anxiety, depression, malnutrition and poor physical health. I was active but in no way was I healthy. I remembered running bases in junior-league baseball, running an airforce base after work in Alberta, running the perimeter of a Manila suburb, and running a local park in Copenhagen. I’d always gotten to a certain point and then given up. I’d been running my whole life but it took this blundered 10k race to see that there was a pattern. It took this failure in action to realize that I needed to make a change.

A Getaway

For 20 years I‘d been a snowboarder. It was my release. It was my suit of armour. As a designer, many decisions in my day required consideration and nuance. It was debilitating to constantly think in multiple layers of meaning. Snowboarding kneecapped my inner-procrastinator and favoured split-second decision making. It was my way to melt the world away and blast through thigh-deep snow, fight or flight, over cornices, down chutes or through tightly-packed trees. I didn’t want time to think.

Thinking was something I associated with work. A list of ex-partners would say, “Todd overthinks things.” Running, however, triggered something different than snowboarding. It gave me space to bump around in the abyss. It was a new kind of fun. I started running with music but quickly found it distracting. I started smiling again. There was something wonderful about breathing in my surroundings, choosing my own pace, and settling in for a definite time or distance. Around the time I signed up for my first half-marathon I felt the compulsion to try yoga. I don’t know what it was. I’d always been interested but never had the courage to try… In hindsight it seems silly. After playing roulette with a few styles of classes I stumbled into a meditation session on a Sunday morning and everything fell into place. This thing I had been doing, this little pocket of bliss I’d touched while running, it was meditation. My friend Chris Brandt explained it quite eloquently so I’ll quote him here,

“You’ll be sitting there. You’re trying to clear your mind but it’s drifting to an open door, in this open door is a squirrel, and it’s trying to get inside. Close the door. These squirrels are everywhere. They’re shiny things. They’re distractions. They’ll run through your mind without a care. Don’t pay attention and just let them run past.”

I’m Going Back

All of the sudden I was practicing yoga 3-4 times, dragonboating twice, and running another 4-5 times in any given week. I had time to do things and my work wasn’t suffering. Days turned into months, my runs became longer and my times were quicker. After logging a 10 kilometre run I glanced at the timer on my phone and realized that I’d run it in less than 40-minutes. Quickly returning home to see what it meant, I Googled, “Olympic record 10k”… Why? I don’t know. I came to my senses and tried again. I Googled, “2011 BMO Okanagan 10k results”. I scrolled down and my eyes lit up. The time I’d just run would put me in the top-25 finishers. A few seconds later I purchased an entry to the 2012 race and quietly said to myself, “I’m going to go back and win this thing.”

My 10k time came up in conversation with a friend and she referred me to a running coach; BC record holder and elite runner Kevin O’Connor. We met up at a track—the first real track I’d ever run on—and he analyzed my 5k pace with scrutiny. He offered critical advice about things I’d never before heard of and all of the sudden I had something geeky to analyze. Tempo runs, intervals, ladder drills, and hill-training. Pre-race energizer, carb-loading, and recovery. We set a starting date and drafted a work-back from my race. Over the next 60 days I ran almost 600 kilometres and wore holes in my shoes. When the week of departure arrived I was jittering with excitement; I had my hotel room booked, all of my gear packed, and had my split times memorized.

Leave Everything Out There

A cool breeze swept through the early morning crowd, through my thin race singlet, and over my trembling calves. The starting gun fired. I shot off with the lead pack of racers and dug into a rusty-feeling two kilometres. Alternating between speeds, I was having difficulty finding my race. It was at 5km when Kevin’s words popped into my head, “Know your splits, if you’re in a good place at halfway start to increase your tempo.” Six kilometres, tempo up. Seven and a half kilometres, tempo up. I was passing people now. Eight kilometres, tempo up, and I’d seen this route before. By the time I hit the 9km marker I was in a full sprint and over my heavy breath I heard footsteps approaching from behind. Not letting anyone rein me in I rounded the final corner and yearned for my optimistic spectator from the year prior; my legs burning, my arms surging and 300 metres left.

Refusing to look at the clock I sent every ounce of energy into my legs and ran straight through the finish without stopping for a medal. I did not want the feeling I had the year before. After cooling down I returned to check my stats to discover that I’d finished 8th with a time of 00:38:09. Slightly disappointed, I started to strain under the reality that in one year I’d improved by over 20 minutes. I had not finished first but I’d completed the race in a time I would never have dreamed a year earlier.

Recovery

In the time since I’ve run 6 more races, logged over 2000 kilometres, lost too many toenails to count, and suffered my first running-related injuries. Despite this pain it’s worth pushing to know what’s possible. This past November I ran my longest run at 28 kilometres on my 28th birthday. A run for myself, for the sheer joy of fresh air.

It has never been easy and I don’t fool myself into thinking it ever will be. Each time I touch my shoes I drop into a chasm of reasons why I shouldn’t put them on. What could I read? What should I write? Which of my friends could I call to have coffee? These thoughts continue as I suit up, as I stretch, as my legs start pumping and I begin to jog. My thoughts circle like flea-ridden buzzards stalking injured prey. I ignore the buzzards—or maybe to Chris’s metaphor, the rabid squirrels—and focus on my run. My heart rate rises. It’s only around the six kilometre mark when these distractions punch their time card and pipe, “All right, it looks like you’re doing this thing.” And then it’s white noise. Bliss.

Now, my goal is somewhat of a unicorn at 00:34:30. I want to go back and win that race. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. I actually fear achieving it because it might require that I find something else to do. So, for now I’m at peace with consistency. I run 5 times a week, I smile more and I’ve found something that I love. I run toward things and not away. Sometimes I run to forget but mostly I run to think. I run to absolve wrongs and I run to make sense of what is right. I run to stay fit. Above all else, though, I run to be better than the person that I was yesterday.

--

--

Todd Smith
Todd Smith

Written by Todd Smith

Design consultant. Business advisor. Minimalist. Runner. Yogi. Exploring the linkage between education, mentorship, and innovation

No responses yet