Running Man.

I have recently become some what of a runner. I charge up my iPod, make a playlist, throw on my head band, lace up my shoes, and I'm off. Surprisingly I'm rather proud of my progress that I have made thus far, but it doesn't always come easy. I have a friend who chooses not to believe that life is like running a marathon, in some part I agree, but for this blog I'm going to disagree.

Here are just a few connections that I have made with running and life.

Goals-
When I run, I am obsessed with seeing how far I can go. I set a goal, and I try as hard as I can to reach that goal. The funny thing is, the goal is completely arbitrary. The goal is there to trick my brain into giving me the energy and will to make it that distance. I have no idea how far that goal is, or if the distance to that goal is significant at all, its just the goal, the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is sort of like my college life for me. I am in college simply because I told myself "I want a college degree", what for? I have no idea, but it was a goal, a distance to run. Now the interesting thing will be to look back. Because after I run, I always look on Google Maps to examine the significance of my running goal I set for myself, and to measure how far I ran. It will be interesting to look back on my days in college and see if the goal of getting a college degree from Ohio State is significant.

Rest-
There are times when I run when I just have to stop. Every part of me aches, my head swims, the sweat bleeds off my skin, and my lungs start to play catch-up.

There are times in life when we just need to stop. We have to let ourselves recuperate so that we can continue to run towards our goal. One might feel like a failure or lazy when they take a break, but if you don't, you'll never make it to the end.

Death-
When I run into traffic, there could be a car that runs a red light and kills me. That's sort of where the metaphor breaks down. However my point is, shit happens.

Walls-
When I run, I hit these barriers. My muscles tense up, my lungs breathe heavy, and my head begins to swim. I call these walls. They just sort of come randomly, but you can't stop when you hit them, you just have to keep on running. It sucks, it's hard, it's painful, but you just have to keep on running in order to break through them.

This is so much like life. We just enter these times in our lives when life just sucks. Problems and issues pile up on us and they cause us to want to stop running and give up. However, when I've entered such times, the only answer is to press on work through the pain and strain to try and come out the other side.

That's the cool thing about hitting walls. While it sucks to hit a wall and have to power through it, once you break through, your renewed and can run further and faster than before.


So there are my running analogies.