Born to Run

Just Don't Do It

Credit: Souhebys, NIKE WAFFLE RACING FLAT, MOON SHOE, 1972 OG

I received an email inviting me to run a 10K on Super Bowl Sunday. You know, early in the morning, before the wings and twenty-dollar squares.

I was tempted to write back, “I am never doing this”, but I thought better of it. I find myself doing that more often lately, wanting to argue in futility, having become the kind of aging man who drafts rebuttals in his head to emails sent by algorithms, then deletes them before they can embarrass me. At least for now.

Still, the invitation sat there in my inbox, taunting me like a chip on the shoulder of the entire city. Los Angeles has decided it is a running town again. I feel like we had vanquished them, the runners, in favor of the faux-hikers, those out-of-shape Angelenos who take long walks in expensive clothing and call it hiking.

Runners were once just these thin people in tank tops and strange, waffle-encrusted shoes that no one took seriously. Now their shoes have gone mainstream, along with their gear.

I understand the blue-collar mythology surrounding a morning run, all the things about hard work and tough people. But this isn’t that. Los Angeles doesn’t run like Boston runs, where runners look like they were raised on punishment and black coffee.

Running here is a lifestyle accessory. It’s narcissism, wrapped in some strange conflation of social virtue. They are everywhere now, these runners, jogging in packs, like the coyotes who eat our designer dogs for dinner, traveling through neighborhoods that were not designed for this, wearing trucker hats from Shellback Tavern with contorted faces as if they’re starring in a commercial for an app that builds emotional resilience. They’re wearing those little hydration vests that make them look like they’re about to cross the Sonoran Desert, except they’re really just circling the block for the third time.

I see them post that they are training. For what, exactly? The apocalypse? They can’t outrun the T-800 that will come to eradicate humanity. And just like in the Terminator, Skynet will hit Los Angeles first, because common sense and base-level scientific knowledge still elude us here.

But boy, can we run.

There is a strange smugness to it, too. It’s the sort of thing that tells the world you are doing life correctly, and the rest of us are not. We see you. We see you saying, “I am awake before you, I am disciplined, I am improving, I am building.” Go back to sleep. In a city where most people are barely holding it together, running has become a way to declare that you are not one of them.

The email wasn’t really about a 10K. It was an invitation to a belief system in the new Los Angeles church, where salvation comes in the form of morning miles and proof that you are better than you were last year.

And the truth is, I understand the appeal, I do. This city can be expensive and lonely in a very specific way. The kind of loneliness where you can be surrounded by millions of people and still feel like you’re standing outside a party you weren’t invited to. Running is a salve for that. It’s one of the few analog things left that delivers an immediate feeling of progress. You keep moving forward, and eventually you finish. Unless you drop dead, but nobody really talks about that part. 1 in 100,000 marathon runners will die during their race. All this running needs a warning label.

I understand that all this running may be a good thing. People are drinking less. There are non-alcoholic beers and mocktails, and there is something to be said for waking up without feeling like your body has betrayed you.

But how good do they feel, really? Waking up before the sun and meeting in some parking lot to run? It seems to me like they are all fleeing an unhappy home.

There are real ones, of course. Genuine people, who dig the endorphin rush, who care about things like health and longevity. People who were born to run.

I am not one of them.

The closest I get to looking like a runner is keeping my elbows at ninety degrees while sitting on a barstool, eating a Mexican pizza, and watching the real runners go by outside.

And I am perfectly fine with that.

xAP