This article was written by Take The Magic Step™ team member Scott Douglas, a runner since 1979 and a writer about the sport for almost as long.
After you and I meet for a 10-miler, we could probably more accurately describe each other than could our neighbors. Make it a 20-miler, and we might know each other better than people we’ve worked with for years. Even if we had only an hour together, it’s possible you could educate my sisters about how much my income dropped between 2003 and 2004, or the role the band Luna played in the early days of my relationship with my wife, or how I think marriage affects my interest in racing.
What is it about shared effort that leads to such loose tongues? Like many runners, I’m an introvert; free-flowing conversation isn’t my forte. Ask me a question, and I’m happy to answer it, but in civilian life, I tend more to sit and observe than effusively offer opinions and anecdotes. You might very well have similar traits. So why can’t we shut up after 20 minutes on the trail?
My policy is to treat the matter as I do the mysterious occasional delivery of the Friday New York Times: I have my theories why it happens, but it’s best just to enjoy it than probe too deeply. In a social life usually marked by awkwardness and angst, the ease with which I can talk to a fellow runner in motion is a blessing not to be sullied by overanalysis. Better to acknowledge and embrace that only when meeting for a run do I not think about a stranger, “What will we possibly have to say to each other for the next 90 minutes?”
Underlying the easy rapport are shared assumptions about each other. After all, it’s not as if we’ve struck up a conversation with the person in line in front of us at the grocery store. We know that, thanks to running, the day’s training partner has faced similar setbacks and experienced similar joys, has reached similar conclusions about which paths to pursue amid the endless options available to modern adults.
The power of this phenomenon is all the more noticeable when it’s absent. Once in a great while, I find myself a few miles into a first run with someone and wishing the run were over. Talk of mileage, hopes, plans, mutual acquaintances, illustrative biographical details - hing clicks. Knowing that the other person probably feels the same unexpected disconnect heightens its presence. Not that I expect - want - become best buddies with every runner I meet. But it’s always a little sad when it feels like this significant thing we have in common isn’t enough to chip away at the otherness of the person astride next to me.
Nor do I expect - or want - every run to be filled with with amiable gladhanding. When home from college, I often ran with a guy in my neighborhood who had completely different ideas than me about, well, pretty much everything. We spent entire 11-milers literally screaming at the other about his idiocy concerning politics, religion, patriotism, economics, family and, for good measure, music. One time we almost came to fisticuffs.
And then we would agree on a time to run together the next day.
A version of this essay will appear in Scott’s forthcoming book On Solid Ground: What It’s Like to be a Runner. More sneak peaks of the book will be available exclusively on this site in the coming months.
