Wednesday 1/21/09 - Fighting Technopoly

Nasties - As I look outside and see a dusting of snow on the ground, it reminds me of something I love about running:  runners live through a wider swing of the pendulum than most.  Why do you care about the weather when your day consists of moving from one shelter to the next (home - car - office - car - home)?  How can you fully enjoy relaxing, if you never expend vast amounts of energy?   How fulfilling is an ice cold glass of water after a 20-mile run in August; or how sweet is a pair of dry socks after a wet tromp through Shelby Bottoms?

Runners experience the simply beauty of donning warm dry clothes after running in the rain; standing for an hour in a hot shower after a cold January run; or perhaps the best reward of all, simply stopping at the end of a hard run.   A simple, primal act such as running fights against what Neil Postman calls Technopoly:  The surrender of culture to technology - if something cannot be judged through the sterile filter of economic expediency - it's relegated to, at best, quaintness.   

So I want to encourage all of you to enjoy running for runnings' sake, and not necessarily for the external benefits derived from running.   The experience of getting out the door and running in 35 degree rain has a beauty  in and of itself, regardless of the psychological benefits achieved from that run.

This week, our run is not going to take us anywhere:  Thanks to Matt Poag, designer of this course...

See you at 6:00 on Wednesday!

Mark