Running with the Pack Read Online Free PDF Page B

was the futility of achievement. Most of the running I have done in my life has not been about achievement anyway — not as far as I can see. It was just something I did, for a variety of reasons. Entering this race, I suppose, does introduce an element of achievement into the mix. But, even then, the achievement in question is of a peculiarly self-undermining variety. When I started training for this marathon, six miles in the Miami late-summer heat would nearly kill me. Slowly I built up the distance. I could barely sleep the nights before my long runs, I was so eager to get out on the road to see if I could do the extra distance. But as soon as I did, the immediate feeling of satisfaction was quickly replaced by restlessness. Twelve miles, okay — but next week I’ll do thirteen. Learning to run distance is all about setting reasonable weekly goals — goals you can achieve if you put in the work — and then achieving them. This seems to be hard work followed by achievement: one strand of the American Dream. But, for me at least, Idon’t know how it is with others, this is a very special sort of work-achievement cycle. It is a work-achievement cycle that reveals the futility of all work-achievement cycles. Running distance is goal-based achievement that reveals the bankruptcy of goal-based achievement.
    Imagine you are a little kid outside a sweet shop, penniless, staring in at all the sweets you can’t buy. God appears next to you and says:
    â€˜You know, kid, one day you’ll be able to buy everything in this shop.’
    â€˜Really, God?’
    â€˜Yep, and you know what? When you can, you won’t want to anymore. That’s life, kid!’
    Any worthwhile achievement, I suspect, changes you in a way that makes what you achieve no longer important to you. If by some miracle I actually finish this marathon, I’ll have a celebratory late brunch — aka a bucketful of Mojitos — on South Beach. But I guarantee you that by dinner time my initial surge of satisfaction will be replaced by restlessness. The first thing I think will be this: well, after all, I did it, and on the back of a seriously curtailed training regime as well — I mean, how difficult can it be? Then, I’ll start thinking about the Keys 100 — an ultramarathon (with 50- or 100-mile options, take your pick) from Key Largo to Key West that’s happening in May. Then, I’ll start thinking about some altogether more challenging things that are in the pipeline for late 2011 and 2012. But the goal of this is not to achieve things. To think that it is would be to misunderstand everything. I don’t want a stack of race completion certificates I can put on my living-room wall or medals or belt buckles that tell people: I’ve run this, I’ve run that. The sense of satisfaction that goes with knowing I have finished a race? I don’t evenwant that. Achievement, for me at least, is a process of making the things I achieve not matter any more. I run not to achieve anything — not in this sense of acquiring something — but to be changed by the process of achieving. Of course, I have to achieve things in order to be changed by a process of achieving things. But achieving things is just a means to an end. I run because I want to be changed. The question is of course: how?
    Another way of thinking about the midlife crisis is as an attempt to reclaim the freedom of youth. This I think is partly right, but also wrong in at least one crucial respect. Running distance is about freedom — I’m convinced of that — but it’s not the same sort as the freedom of youth. Both the traditional midlife crisis and the endurance-based alternative are, in their own ways, about freedom. But where they differ — and they do differ crucially — is that they have a very different conception of what freedom is.
    In the high-velocity sports of my youth — rugby, cricket,