Why? Simply because I embrace and experience life in all its forms and attendant emotions with gratitude, and quite frankly I have little patience (but much sympathy) for those who whine. You know the kind – the kind, who during a race, catch up to you or vice versa and they immediately want to tell you what’s wrong with them, the course, the weather … as an explanation for why they are not running faster.
Me – I’m just happy to be there and I readily tell them so, to which I have been the recipient of a myriad of comments from you’re right (as though they have had an Epiphany) to utterances of complete disagreement and borderline disgust with me for harboring such heretical thoughts.
I love to run and, for me, participation in a race is the ultimate expression of that love as I embrace and experience life with gratitude.
Why do you race?
Copyright ©2006
Margaret E. Ruddy
Back to Vignettes