Racing is the lovemaking of the runner. It is excitement in the blood. There is the same agitation, the same stirring of the pulse, the same feeling in the chest, the same delightful apprehension that you feel when nearing the one you love.

But there is also an element of fear. If racing attracts, it also repels. As I try for my perfection, I am all too aware of my imperfections. When I race, I am the person the philosopher William James called the “twice-born.” Such people see an element of real wrong in the world, especially in themselves. And they know this must be overcome by doing something heroic, that they themselves must be cleansed by suffering.

I accept that. I still seek the race, seek to be tested, ask to meet pain and to pass or fail. The difference now is that the race has become simply a race. I continue to race, and I never give less than my best. At the finish, I am on my hands and knees, gasping and thinking, “This is absurd.” But i have put aside the winning and the losing, the getting of trophies and not getting trophies. I have had my fill of that. I have become a runner.

Jogging, they say, is competing against yourself. Racing is competing against others. Running is discovering that competing is only competing. It is essential and not essential. It is important and unimportant. Running is finally seeing everything in perspective. Running is discovering the wholeness, the unity that everyone seeks. Running is the fusion of body, mind, and soul in that beautiful relaxation that joggers and races find so difficult to achieve.

Relaxation is the sign of the runner, not the racer or jogger. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to relax. i learned to relax not only my body but my mind and soul as well. I discovered that running is an art from and that I could be the running as the dancer is the dance. I found that running is play – and even more, a sort of spiritual discipline. It is a way of seeing reality, or perceiving the good and the true. Running gibes me my special perspective.

“Each of us has a mission of truth,” writes the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassset. “What my eye sees of reality is seen by no other eye. We are irreplaceable; we are necessary.”

When I run, truly run, I am certain of that. It is all there. My body does what it does best. The mind like a kaleidoscope constantly rearranges the things it has stored into new and exciting patterns. And my soul utterly loses itself in the present.

The runner has  a view of life that makes all the jogging and racing worthwhile.

/George Sheehan on Running to Win