Running Through Life

Read this and though of my dearest friend...

Have you ever noticed that when the friends and neighbors of someone accused of committing a horrible crime are interviewed, they always say the same thing: "I can't believe he did it. He seemed so normal."

I'm quite sure that if anyone had interviewed my friends and neighbors when I first started running, they would have offered much the same response. I'm sure that they couldn't understand why this middle-aged, overweight man was out there running and walking nearly every day. It just wouldn't have seemed normal.

The truth is, it didn't seem normal to me either. Normal was coming home from work, drinking a beer or 12, having a bag of chips and a half pack of cigarettes, and then eating dinner. Normal was being as stationary as possible for as long as possible.

I'm often asked what happened. People want to know how and why a seemingly normal man starts running at middle age. They want there to be some grand design, some elegantly articulated plan to change my life. They want there to be a reason. There wasn't. There isn't. Like an out-of-left-field felon, I think I just came face-to-face with the stranger deep in my psyche. The difference was that my stranger didn't want me to do something bad; it wanted me to do something good. - John Bingham

I want you to do something good.

I also ran 1 mile on Monday.