He ran to get away. To get away from the insurmountable fear and stress that continued to build with no end in sight. The fear and stress and loneliness that nicotine and alcohol couldn’t seem to dampen in longer. No, what he needed was to feel. Feel the pent of emotion fuel his piston like legs and oversized heart.
He ran into the mountains with the only ambition to hurt. His lungs burned like a gasoline fire and his legs fatigued until numbness set in. And he kept running for hours, looking for the long lost answers that have never been answered. Slowly forgetting, but not enough to matter.
As he got deeper and deeper, away from civilization the weather turned. Large ominous, black clouds built themselves around the peak like a fortress. Thunder cracked through the world and lightning shot across the sky so close the Runner felt like he could touch it. And he kept running, screaming to bring more, whispering to himself “I can take more”. All his emotion turned to anger, and he challenged Mother Nature and cursed God “come get me you son of a bitch”.
He raced down the mountain taking on the challenge to live, even though in that singular moment, he didn’t care whether he won or lost, lived or died. And he took on the thunder and the lightning and the hail and asked for more, begged for more. All as he simultaneously navigated the rocky technical terrain that was a product of millions of years of erosion and change. He floated gracefully in such a way that he never broke his elegant stride. The stride the same God he was cursing blessed him with and that he could never understood why. He expertly placed his feet on the rocky, uneven trail that could hardly be called a trail. Rolling and charging with such purpose he forgot everything in that brief moment in time. Pure Nirvana.
He made it through the storm and the adrenaline wore off leaving the Runner in a crumpled heap, much like an aluminum can stomped at the end of a party. He limped back to the trailhead with wobbly legs and a heart so tired it hurt worse than heartbreak. He could barely walk. He began to remember life. The stress and fear slowly crept back in like demons. He was back, but his perspective changed just enough to make life bearable enough to continue on. And deep in the runners being, a sense of accomplishment was achieved more powerful than the opiates flooding the country. It was in this sense a drug and he could never get enough from this day on. He was addicted and in a certain sense, trapped for the foreseeable future. Whether he knew it or not, he could never kick his habit. The same activity his friends and peers saw as healthy was simply a vice that couldn’t be shook. A vice that drove him so forcefully it was equivalent to an animal seeking food and people seeking love. A vice that would dictate the man's life for better or for worse, through sickness and through health.
He was a Runner.
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