Even "also ran" runners are runners, too.

For my wife and the few others who as they read this are thinking, "What? Another blog?" let me explain. For several years I have steadily maintained my blog, "Pastor Martin's Myopia" which primarily concerns my life as the pastor of a small, local fellowship. A year or so ago I began "Ice Age Trail Sojourner" as an attempt to chronicle my "bucket-list" endeavor to be a Thru Hiker of the Ice Age Trail, the thousand-mile trail that meanders through Wisconsin. Admittedly, I don't post there much and need to get back at it but like a Yellow Blaze marker, at least I know where I left off. One of the passions of my life is running, however, and feeling a desire to write about this aspect of my life I've decided to mark out another spot. I may be as successful with this as Ice Age Sojourner but so be it.

For years, I have subscribed to three magazines  - Running Times, Runner's World and Silent Sports (which may be my favorite of the three) - as a way to glean race and training knowledge and be inspired to higher heights, which is to say, longer and faster runs. I don't read any of the issues cover to cover. I gloss through them, grazing on articles like a cow finds good pasture in a field. And frankly, there are many issues I never really get to. They sit next to my bed collecting dust, the stack getting imperceptively higher as the months go by until I decide to chuck the lot of them. But I have a beef with all of them, especially Running Times and Runner's World. When's the last time you picked up one of these magazines and found a slightly overweight, guy at mid-life gracing its cover? Or a woman of equal girth and age? Exactly. Never. They usually find some supermodel, put her in running shoes and have a shot of her running at the camera. Or they have some uber-athlete in his prime doing the same. I once emailed this very complaint and sent it off to Runner's World and never heard from them. Not even a computer generated courtesy reply. My point is that as a veteran runner of nearly 70 races including 8 marathons and 2 ultras, most of the people who are around me while I run toward the back of the pack do not look like the svelte athletes or models that adorn the covers of any running magazine that I am aware of. And believe me guys like me (and gals, too) who are out there for the challenge of it all even though they are a little round around the middle, a little bald at the top and a little heavy on the backside make up a lot of the running community out there. If Amby Burfoot, Editor Emeritus (or something like that) of Runner's World, were to pull up his chair across from me at some pre-race pasta feed I may just tell him that (before asking for his autograph).

My point exactly

So, I'm an "also ran." My name will never make the headlines for some heroic athletic feat. I'll just keep collecting Finisher medals and T-shirts until my wife tells me I have to clean out my shirt drawer and find a new place to hang my medals. This blog is dedicated to people like myself who are also "also-rans", who run because their heart tells them to and while they may look like a little overweight Shetland pony as they lumber down the road in our mind we are a stallion fleet upon the plain.

How I imagine myself...

How I really look...