Running Does Not Upspeak

The Internet is a bit like Jack Horner's Christamas pie, you stick in a thumb and pull out a random morsel. In this case it is a poem by Taylor Mali about upspeak that you can listen to here .

Now it is the job of this blog to relate things to running, either directly or as an exercise in convoluted reasoning. I have quite a lot of scope with this game because one of my core assumptions is that running keeps you honest. You cannot fudge how fast, far or how easily you can move and so you have to come to terms with your own abilities and look objectively at both what you can do and what you do do. In one small area of your life you can say this is what I am and this is what I know.

Running can therefore be a yardstick to be placed against other things that are messier and more confusing. In that way you can relate it to almost anything.

So can I relate it to a poem about a style of speech? Well it is possible because it ends with this plea:

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Well what else is running but an expression of your convictions, determination and your own authority?

Running is a straightforward activity: a deal you make with yourself that the more you put in the more you get out. It is not a matter of subtle argument or intellectual complexity. You do something and you can measure and describe the results. It is declarative and therefore relates quite well to the theme of the poem.

Humility and Truth Pt. 1

Humility and truth – as a title it sounds rather grand and forbidding, like a Victorian lecture on virtue, morals or anything else requiring a stiff backbone. But that cannot be right; I am not trying to bolster an empire or preach a normative sermon. I am only writing about running – a simple physical activity, a recreation.

But it is not so simple and I believe that anything that takes time and effort, teaches its own lessons. You not only learn the techniques of the task itself, how to run better or shape a piece of wood more accurately or solve equations, you learn about the way you approach the task. Are you soft on yourself or relentless? Will accept imperfections or only be satisfied with the best? Are you pragmatic or idealistic? These questions and more are being played out all the time and mostly there is a mixed bag of answers. However you gather them up and over time they form a pattern and you know where you have to try harder and you know your limitations

This is where humility comes in. You cannot maintain any illusion of innate superiority. There are always people who can run faster or longer, or faster and longer. There are always people who overcome more difficulties. It doesn’t matter where in the pack you are, there are always people you think should be at your level and sometimes they are running away from you. You vow to be better in future but that vow is in itself a recognition of humility – you know you could do better.

It is not just a matter of speed. There are people who are slower who show great virtue. At the moment I am using the gym a lot and I regularly see people working to overcome physical limitations. A couple of people in particular can barely walk, yet they struggle onto the treadmill, hold onto the bar and move their legs faster than would otherwise be possible. One of them has obviously had a stroke and has to use his left hand to lift his right arm into place. It takes him ages to set himself up on the various machines but he never gives up. I think about these people more than the fit and toned. I wonder if I would be as determined if I was so limited in my movements.

Yet to balance all this humility there has to be an inner feeling of satisfaction. You need to feel good about what you achieve as well as recognising the achievement of others and for this running is perfect. If you do what you can, within your own boundaries, you feel good. Each run has the potential of being a small victory.

Whenever I see someone out on the roads, running at whatever pace, I see someone doing their best. There is a community of us, all doing our best. Being part of that is a source of both humility and satisfaction.

Humility and Truth Pt. 2

In the past I have written before about running being a form of honesty. It doesn’t matter what you think of your capabilities, how fast you wish to be, or how well you know the theory, the time you take to complete a run tells you everything there is about your capabilities on the day. Of course you can plan to improve, work hard and make progress but there is always a clear measure of how you have done. You cannot bluff your way round a course.

Honesty and truth have been on my mind quite a bit recently as I have been reading Flat earth news by Nick Davies, which paints a bleak picture of the information available to us through the news media. Because of pressures of productivity, the need for speed, slimmed-down newsrooms, fewer local stringers, there is an over reliance on lifting copy from wire services and topping and tailing press releases. There is little time for fact checking and the truth of a story can sometimes be less important than feeding the prejudices of the audience. If something is said often enough it becomes the conventional wisdom and if no one checks everybody can continue to believe that the earth is flat.

This followed reading about Joseph Stiglitz's book on the full the cost of the Iraq war, which exposed a mountain of official lies by following the money. There was also interesting an article about the standards of curatorship in current art exhibitions which concluded:

The problem is not blockbusters. It's that in London we get too many exhibitions that sound big, but in reality are very small. As a nation, we've become professional bullshitters (as Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson's book Fantasy Island recently argued), and our art galleries are no exception.

All in all my head is reeling with the thought that all our public discourses and a host of consequential actions are governed by misinformation and an inability to check claims for truth.

I thus turn with relief to a run and know I can run for so many minutes and cover so many miles. It is the truth about my current condition and it gives me a grasp on one tiny bit of reality.