2018-07-10
Motivation & Reasons to Run
- What do you like about running?
There are mainly two ways to answer this question:
- A number of reasons, mostly rationalizations that make sense, are understandable, shareable, reasonable, narratives. Freedom, primal feel, breathing life and nature, getting healthy strong and fast, learning to flow, and so on.
- Just because. No answer. This can even be hinted on camera with a pause, as Jenn Shelton does in a unedited footage of a 2010 interview, the interviewee simply stops to think, looks to the side and laughs with no answer. Much alike Jeanne Favret-Saada Être Affecté (1990a). Which sums at first as I don't know, I like it a lot. [...] Just my thing, that I do, that keeps me happy. [nodding]. The rarámuri may be on a similar track.
Many runners find more joy and pride on running ultra than anything else, that is, compared with what they do for a living. Motivation on running goes parallel to a "day job". When Jenn is asked to present herself she asks what should she say: what I do for work? And the interviewer just allows to say whatever she likes, so she gives, name, age, and place where she lives.
- What are runners major activity that they identify with?
- How many runners manage to make their day job to be a help or an obstacle for their training? And how may this change once some elite get recognized, sponsored, and professionalized?
Running Beyond | Epic Ultra, Trail and Skyrunning Races [2016] by Ian Corless
Foreward by Kilian Jornet
The feeling of freedom'. That is probably the most common answer to the question,Why do you run trails?'. It is my answer too.