Yesterday I went to see the movie The Spirit of Marathon with a couple of other running enthusiasts. Two people in this group already ran marathons, and their feat deeply fascinated me.
The movie covered 6 groups of people who are in 2005 Chicago Marathon race. Two top runners: Deena and Daniel, and 4 common people, an old man and his daughter, a woman in college, a mother of a 7-year old, and a man who has to drop out the race due to knee injury. In the end, we saw 40,000 people running in the Chicago race. It is so amazing. Could there be so many people interested in and capable of doing a marathon?
But think about it, marathon is a simple sport. All you need to do is keep running. Yes, there is endurance challenge. But you can overcome it if you are determined. Other than that, it is a low-risk sport. Comparing to many other challenge in life, marathon is a relatively easy task. It is much more difficult to challenge ourselves it search for a better career, to fight in a political movement, to step into a leader position, or to speak out the truth. Running a marathon does not necessarily make us braver in doing all these other tasks.
Let’s treat marathon as a hobby sport. That is all it is.
(P.S. It’s about one week since I wrote the above blog, and I struggled to finish a 2-mile run this morning. It took tremendous willpower and determination to continue running, despite weak legs, pounding hearts and tired body. Thus I have more respect for people who finished Marathon. All these people have tremendous willpower to get it done. – Jan 31, 2008)
