of running

i sometimes - not often, but every few months or so - think how i would be if i wasn't a runner.

because that - a runner - is what i am; even if not a professional athlete or even a solid competitor on an amateur level, it still categorize myself as such after doing it on a regular basis for over a third of my life now. the definition of a runner is one of the few attached to me by myself (and possibly by others) that i am completely sure of and that i whole-heartedly agree with. 

i think running has changed me in many ways, and i think most of these changes have been good; but yet i have no way of knowing how i would have turned out had i not started running. would i have picked up something else? maybe i could be a skillful musician now, or perhaps i would have written a book. maybe i would have surprised myself (and others) and picked up a team sport of some kind. or maybe i would have just gone mad. 

who knows, really, and of course it makes very little difference. it's just interesting in a way that i find it very difficult to imagine a state of not being a runner; not waking up in the morning and self-evidently putting on my sneakers as the first thing. it would definitely be a different kind of existence to the one i have now - not saying it would automatically be worse, but in all honesty i'm not so interested in it, either.

that's why i hope i don't ever have to find out how it is not to be a runner; that i can keep on being one as long as i want to. because even if sometimes running on the same route over and over again can feel tad boring, or if there are times when bad weather makes the whole thing unpleasant, or if every now and then my legs are tired - even then it does feel good to recognize that running is a constant in my life, something that stays and doesn't ask any more than i what i give. a thing that is mine and what makes me me; something without which i wouldn't be myself.