Why I Run Reason #9 - To Pay It Forward

I know it’s been a while since I’ve made a contribution to the “Why I Run” series (please visit the archives under the same heading for my previous installments) but I feel that given the current holiday season and the events of the past week, it is a most opportune time for me to discuss one of the poignant and powerful motivations for why I run.

For those who haven’t yet had the fortune of watching this wonderful movie, Pay It Forward is a low-budget feel-good story about a seventh grader, Trevor, whotook an intriguing homework assignment given to him by his social studies teacher and by completing it inspired a national movement to change the world for the better. The assignment (movie clip) was simple yet challenging: Think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor’s solution (movie clip) was revolutionary and profound: Repay good deeds not by payback, but by pay forward – doing good deeds for three new complete strangers with the understanding that they would have to pay off by helping three other new people.

I’m not going to divulge any more details about the movie, as I’m hoping you all would be intrigued enough to see it on your own. Suffice it to say that this flick ranks as one of my favorite movies of all time. I love this film not only for its simple yet elegant message, but also because it is so applicable to what we can achieve in our own lives as runners.

When I first started out, I saw running as a very individual sport. It was just me and a pair of running shoes going to war against the asphalt. The first time I went running which was only about 5 years ago, I wasn’t even able to make it past 2 miles before I called it quits and went home. Slowly though, as I laced up the shoes more habitually and visited the park more and more, it became rather obvious that I was not the only runner around. Because I didn’t know much about running at the time, I’d hang around water fountains and port-a-potty lines, listening to conversational tidbits and asking stupid questions of any runner I could find. I picked up most of what I knew about running back in the day in the most unsanitary of circumstances. Since my friends at that time were all non-runners, I was somewhat forced to learn all I could about running that way. Eventually, however, as I became more familiar and knowledgeable about the sport, I realized that this secret running passion was too great, too powerful, and too inspiring to keep to myself alone. That’s when I decided I would do what I could to introduce, teach, and/or coach three new people every year to the sport. It was the best way I knew how of giving back. Although some of my efforts have not been met with much success, others have gone on to do great things with their running. For all my time and energy, I never ask for much from those who’ve been under my tutelage. All I ask is that when the time comes, they would likewise do the same for those around them - introduce them to the sport and help them out as much as they can. In essence, they have to promise to pay it forward...

Shortly after her B.Q. the other day, F.L. came to tell me she’s been encouraging and helping out a fellow runner/blogger who recently found out she has a pelvic fracture and has to be on crutches for a while…I couldn’t help but look at her and smile. The circle is now complete. I think my own little social experiment is working out just fine.

Why I Run Reason #8 - To Dissociate and Appreciate

Disclaimer: The contents of this post might be considered gruesome and disturbing for new runners and those not familiar with the practice of our sport. Reading discretion is advised.

I have always believed that I have a high tolerance for disdain.. Maybe as the result of years spent running and training in a busy and congested metropolis, I’ve pretty much grown accustomed to the runner hate I see being expressed all around the city on my daily runs. I’ve been sideswiped by bikes, ran over by baby carriages, and hit on the back of the head by misdirected flying objects on more than a few occasions while running through Central Park. Although I’ve received quite a number of bumps and bruises from these unfortunate encounters over the years, I’ve always brushed these injuries off as part of doing business in the city. Through it all, I had never considered running as a dangerous, high-contact sport. That all changed last week, in the outskirts of a small city in Nevada no less.

I had woken up early after a fitful sleep in a foreign bed, sharing a room with three other guys who were too tired to care what I was doing. We had stayed up ‘til 3AM the previous night drinking, laughing, and playing cards, so even waking up at 9AM was not easy.

Yet, because it was my first day in a new town that I’d never been in before, I sucked it up, got dressed, and got out for my run. There were already quite a few pedestrians on the main road that traverses the town so I decided to pick a quieter side street to begin my trek. I had picked out a nice circumferential route for my run the night before, so I was ready and excited to start running.

I was barely a quarter mile into my run when I ran by a bus picking up some passengers from a bus stop. Because there was no sidewalk and the road abruptly narrows right after the bus stop, I skirted a bit to the left to continue my running. Suddenly, right at the moment that I passed by the bus, the bus pulls out of the stop, accelerates, and bumps me on my left side as I’m running. As soon as I made contact with the bus, I freaked, and dove headfirst to the side of the road. I landed on some dirt and gravel on my right side and slid a few inches. After regaining my senses, and realizing that I had somehow survived a collision with a bus, I stood up to assess my injuries. I had scratched up my right arm pretty bad and it was bleeding bright red blood. My right shoulder was also a bit achy, but otherwise, I was not that badly hurt. As I removed the ground debris off my arm and used my bandana to apply pressure to the fresh wounds, I realized that the bus had already driven away. What a jerk! It had not even bothered to stop to check on me. I was bitter and angry and sent a few four-letter words in the general direction of the bus.

After cleaning my wounds and dusting off, I had a decision to make. I could scratch the run and walk back to the hotel, or I could continue to run despite the bleeding and the pain. I don’t know what possessed me at that moment, but I decided to pressed on with my 8 miler like I had planned. I think this was a turning point for me because despite the aches, the pains, the bleeding and the emotions, I ran strong and finished the scheduled run without any problems.

The most amazing thing was that although I started the run after the accident full of anger and spite for the bus that ran me over and didn’t bother to stop, I finished it with a sense of happiness and fulfillment, as if I succeeded despite the obstacle. Something beautiful happened in the eight miles I spent on the road that day. I witnessed the transformation from an irrational, vengeful, and mad me to an accomplished, successful, and happy me. Somehow, in some spiritual way, I was able to dissociate my being from my negative thoughts and replace the feelings of victimization and anger with sentiments of appreciation and euphoria. The change in attitude was so drastic and apparent to me, that even as I walked back to the hotel after my run with my blood-tinged bandana wrapped around my right, I was more thinking of a good story to tell the guys than feeling sorry for myself.

Yeah, running does strange things to people and makes them think strange thoughts...but that's exactly why I run.

Why I Run Reason #7 - To Be A Better M.D.

It doesn’t happen very often. Very rarely in fact. But when an overweigh teenage boy comes into my office asking, with tears in his eyes, for advice on how he could get rid of his man-boobs and not end up like his mother’s brother, who is obese, has diabetes, and spends half his day hooked up to a dialysis machine, how could I resist the urge to share with him what to me comes so naturally? So I gave him a hug, sat him down, and proceeded to share with him my love affair with running. He didn’t talk much, just listened, as I slowly introduced the idea that if he was serious about wanting to cut the fat, weigh less, look great and make others jealous, he needed to cut the junk food, dump the PSP, lace up the sneakers, and do battle with the road. He was skeptical when I told him that if he listened and was diligent with the diet and exercise, I could help him to lose 5 pounds a month so that by the time he graduated high school in 3 years, he’d be down to his ideal body weight. (At the back of my mind, I knew it was a bit of a stretch, but hey, I’m a runner at heart, and ambitious by nature, so I went with it!) I ended the visit by giving him a modified easy walk-jog-run plan to get him started. As he was getting up to leave, I still wasn’t sure whether he was catching on with the program until he volunteered to keep a record of his runs and bring them to me at the next visit. I congratulated him in advance for his courage and determination and promised to call him a runner the next time we meet.

I’m not sure if what I do and say in a half-hour office visit translates to anything out there in the real world for these kids. Because of my specialty, I come in contact with a lot of overweight and obese children. Most of the time, I can offer only very basic and simple advice on nutrition and exercise because the kid or the parent either do not understand the problem or lack the desire or motivation for change. However, once in a blue, I’ll have a family that is receptive and looking to make a difference in their lives. When I get these referrals, I get real excited because then I get to talk about what I’m passionate about, and in the process, use my knowledge and experience to teach, motivate, and inspire my patients to make the decision to live a healthier life. The task is not easy, and the process of transformation can take years, and as the provider, I hardly ever get the satisfaction of seeing the fruits of the labor. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try. Because although the kids might not know it, they help me to run just as I’m helping them to run. (Does that make sense? Well, it does to me!)

In that way, I believe that running has made me a better doctor. And so for that, I’ll continue to run. If not for me, then for my patients.

Why I Run Reason #6 - To Find The Courage To Read and Write

There’s a story of mine that hasn’t been told in quite some time. In a previous age, in a previous life, back before I knew running, back before I even knew myself, I was a poet and a writer. My exciting but brief career started when I wrote a few creative pieces based on my reactions to a personal tragedy and handed them in for extra credit for my high school English class. The next day, the teacher held me back after class to tell me that I had the potential to be a great writer. Although initially I had my doubts, he sounded genuine so I believed him and started to write. Since that day, I kept a daily journal and wrote in it religiously everyday throughout high school and most of college.

Although most of my writings back in those days were nothing more than the musings and sentiments of an urban teenager going through the usual torments of adolescence and early adulthood, I decided after college that I would share some of the better pieces in a public venue just to see if my writing was any good or whether I’d been led down the wrong path by my old English teacher (although I doubt it because that teacher turned out to be Mr. Frank McCourt). I signed up to give a series of summer readings at a coffeehouse around the city. Because so much of what I was to share was so personal and because I had so little confidence in my own writing, I kept these readings a complete secret from all my friends and family. (To this day, I still get grief from so many that they missed out on my few seconds of fame!) The first set of performances went well. Although I was a nervous wreck and didn’t take my eyes off my paper at all until the third session, most of the audience clapped and cheered at the end. Two people even came up after one of my readings to discuss motivations and influences they detected in my style of writing. I was pleasantly surprised.

Unfortunately, that was the highlight of my writing career. The coffeehouse sessions the following year did not end nearly as well. After one particularly bad night, when the weather outside was terrible, and only three people attended my reading, the manager complained to my agent that my poetry were “incompatible” with his business model and gave me the pick slip. That night, when I got the news, I was so distraught that I lit my writing journal on fire and threw it into the fireplace. I haven’t written another poem since that fateful night, when I threw away the only record of my best writing. My party line is that I don’t have the time to write anymore. In actuality, I’m scared to death of going up on that stage again only to hear that I shouldn’t have bothered.

But now that I’ve become a more consistent runner and blogger, I think I’m almost ready to work my way back to recording personal thoughts on random sheets of paper again. Distance running helps because it forces me to deal with performance anxiety and allows ample alone time for creative thinking. Blogging helps in that it gives me a forum to formulate thoughts, opinions, and observations and enter them in a semi-permanent form. Although not intended, both may be just what I need to convince myself to give my writing career another try.

Why I Run Reason #5 - For The "Runners' High"

One of my biggest fears that I have as a medical professional who is also a runner is that one day I will be asked to stand in front of a large audience of my colleagues and defend my sport using clinical facts and published data. I can just imagine someone asking me “So, Dr. Laminator, can you clarify for us the risks/benefits of running a marathon on bone health versus other forms of exercise?” or “what makes you believe that we, as a species, are equipped to run such long distances?” or my favorite, “Isn’t it clinically proven that your risk of injury is directly proportional to the number of miles you run?”

To be honest, four years of medical school plus six years of residency/fellowship training did very little to prepare me to answer these types of questions. Maybe I dozed off the day they covered these topics in a conference I attended. Maybe I should have extensively researched the facts before I started running. I don’t know, but then again, it’s hard to assume that a list of clinical objective data or undisputable medical findings would do very much to convince the cynics in the audience.

I think if I were ever put in such a position where I was asked to advocate my sport to an audience of fellow doctors, I’d skip the medical jargon and esoteric factoids and concentrate instead on my own perspectives, observations, and theories about running. I’d tell them that I’m the happiest guy around when I run well and can be downright miserable when I miss a run. I’d tell them about the “runner’s high” that can only be experienced on the road. And even though this amorphous interaction of endogenous endorphins cannot be extracted, quantified or otherwise demonstrated in a lab, it’s true, and it’s real, and it’s what keeps us going on the road long after others have stopped and given up. And if they’re interested, I’d invite them to come on a run with me so they can experience the feeling for themselves then explain to me what exactly is going on. Either way I’ll continue to strive, some days easier than others, to experience the “runner’s high”.

Why I RunReason #4 - To Live Passionately

I woke up this morning to the news that Luciano Pavoratti passed away yesterday at the age of 71 from pancreatic cancer. Although I am not a fan of opera and have seen but one of his many inspiring performances at the Metropolitan Opera House, I couldn’t help but feel saddened by the news of his passing. Although he had many shortcomings as a man, it is undeniably that he is one of the most talented singers ever to grace the opera stage, and he lived a life that was driven by his passion of music.

It is not easy to live a passionate life in the current times. Everyday we are bombarded by tasks to complete and errands to run that we cannot help but become slaves to our responsibilities at home and in the workplace. Our lives become so dominated by the roles that we play that essentially they become all that we identify with. (Consider this mental exercise: If a random stranger at your next cocktail party came over and simply asks, “What are you?” What would you say? I bet most of us would instinctively answer with our job descriptions.) I’m not suggesting that that’s a bad thing, because obviously these roles we play and responsibilities we have are what sustains us and ensures our survival as a society and as a species. But if we allow the things we have to do to be ALL that we do, we run the risk of becoming solely habitual and passive, with every minute of every hour governed by rules and circumstances.

Running for me is my chance to be free from the shackles of my daily routine. For the one or two hours a day I spend on the road, I am my own master. I can run at a leisurely pace to feel the cool pre-dawn breeze if I want, or run fast to chase the sun before it has a chance to hide beneath the horizon. For those precious minutes, I am unreachable, under the jurisdiction of neither man nor circumstance. I can start my journey when it’s convenient for me and stop when I want to stop. I am not pressured by external factors to run a certain distance or a certain pace but rather by an innate desire to run strong and live a passionate life. Running, in essence, has become my passion, and for that, I run.

Why I Run Reason #3 - For The Emotional Experience

Every year, during peak marathon training season, inquiring minds always want to know. “What do you think about on your long runs? Don’t you get bored and run out of things to think about?” In the past, since the question almost always seem to originate from a non-runner, I’d give a cursory “no”, smile, and walk away. But as I was asked this same question by a friend last week who seemed genuinely interested in the answer, I began to give the question more thought and became intrigued. Why don’t I get bored with running on the same roads in the same park at the same time every week? Why don’t I ever get bored? Maybe I’m the weird one?

After fixating on the question for a week and almost resigning to the implication that I was a totally nut job, the answer came to me after my most recent 16-mile long run a few day ago. It was an awkward feeling actually. Physically I felt fine, having ran a good distance at a good pace with barely any residual soreness or fatigue, but psychologically, I was tired and exhausted. I couldn’t figure out why until I was in the shower a bit later. As the cool comforting water splashed over my face, I suddenly felt an intense flurry of emotions overwhelm my senses; remnants from what I felt at different points of the run. Suddenly, I remembered being anxious, angry, happy, frustrated, envious, confused, depressed, delighted, arrogant, dangerous, cautious, hungry, indignant, tickled, defiant, triumphant, and peaceful at specific points during the 16 miles. I poignantly remembered laughing my head off at some guy riding his bike with no hands while picking his nose, and then being moved to tears (or maybe it was just my sweat) at the same point on the course one lap later when my grandparent’s favorite song came on the radio. It was then, that I realized that it’s the gamut of emotions, not the miles themselves, that makes the long runs memorable and fun.

Some people say it’s the boredom that makes them not want to run. I say it’s the boredom that makes me not want to stop.

Why I Run Reason #2 - For Mom

Three years ago, almost to the day, my mom told me while I was heading toward the showers that I was starting to grow a belly.

It was my first year of fellowship, work at the hospital was tough, and I was spending every moment I had out of the hospital studying for boards. Although I was never exactly an exercise freak per se, I was always active throughout medical school and residency, playing different types of sports through the warm days and going skiing and snowboarding during the winter. But with the challenges of new job responsibilities, old friends moving out of town, and preparing for an exam which served to legitimize the last three years of my medical livelihood, carving out time to be active was not on the agenda. So when my mom noted, half-jokingly or not, that I was “showing”, I vowed to myself that once boards were over, a dramatic lifestyle change was going to be in order such that I’d never have to subject myself to such speculation again. That winter, on the day after I took my boards, I enrolled in a two-year membership at New York Sports Club and started the campaign that my brother and I aptly coined “Buff By Summer”.

I’m not sure if I ever achieved “buffness” by the next summer as intended, because I discovered running during the spring (thanks to my friend Matt, my first running mentor, who convinced me that 4 miles in the park was just an excuse to be in shape for summer basketball), and began to use the gym exclusively for the treadmill. But, I’m certain that if mom never made me look and wonder at the mirror that night, I’d never even know I needed to exercise in the first place.

In actuality, there are a lot more reasons why my mom motivates me to run, but to list them all would require a whole separate blog altogether. Suffice it to say that she was the first family exercise freak, always out for a jog before heading out to work and was the most excited for me when she found out I was running the marathon (even though she thought a marathon was 10K long). I’m not sure if she’s going to read this, but if she does, “Thanks mom!” Because of you, I run.

Why I Run Reason #1 - To Be Athletic

Running, or any form of athletics for that matter, was not exactly synonymous with everyday life for a migrant Chinese boy growing up in Queens back in the ‘80s. Because I never swung a bat or dribbled a basketball until I was eight, I was never particularly good or had sufficient time to develop skills at any sport that mattered to boys growing up. Although I was never downright horrible at anything that I tried, I always seemed to lack the instinctual hand-eye coordination that was necessary to excel. To everyone and everything that required any sort of physical talent or ability, I was dependably “average”. Even through high school and college, when my jump shot from the outside got a little better and I learned to hit singles to the outfield from both sides of the plate, I was resigned to the idea that I had already past my athletic prime and “just average” would be all that I’d ever be in the sporting world.

So when I was introduced to running two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to consistently finish races at the top 10% of my age group. All of a sudden, the “average” label no longer fit; I was actually a good runner. But it really wasn’t until I completed my first marathon later that fall, when I had to crawl to the nearest medical station for a quarter of a mile because of severe leg cramps, and somehow still managed to break 3:30 in NYC that I became an athlete. It took a little while, but I had arrived…and for that, I run.

But more important that just attaining the status of an athlete, I think by going through the training, the mental preparation, the anxiety, the adrenaline rush, and the drama inherent in the sport of running, especially marathon running, I gain insight into the world of the professional athlete, and it helps me develop a better understanding and appreciation for the ballplayers I love to watch on ESPN every night. Especially when the pressure is the highest, when there’s no room for error, when its two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in game seven of the League Championship Series and my favorite guy on my favorite team is at bat with runners on first and second with my team trailing by one and I’m pacing up and down and around the living room because I know what this guy does on this one at bat will either deliver my team to the World Series or waste another season that looked so promising at the start, and all the training and all the extra BPs and all the video he watched throughout the entire year comes down to this one at bat, I can close my eyes and see myself again at the 20th mile of the marathon, staring down the sign on the pole signaling the last 10K, and realizing that my entire year of long runs, tempo runs, and interval training have brought me to this point, and how my perception of the entire year will change depending on how I finish this last 10K, and I’m asking myself, never mind the pain, the exhaustion, the hunger and fatigue, “what’s it gonna be?” and for a moment or two, the batter and I are the same, each chasing a dream, each afraid of failing…and that’s when I know, when I truly know, why I run.