Imagine you are flying.

Down a trail.

Over the crest of a low hill.

Around a hairpin curve in the path blinded by a dense forest of trees.

I think a lot of people hear the term ‘running’ and can’t fathom that it means anything more than grueling hours spent on a treadmill. I think most people wallow in the sport as little more than a fitness activity, a workout, or a span of time spent sweating for the sake of the sweat and the calories. 

I have been a runner, properly so, for nearly eighteen years.

I rarely run for the sweat.

I do, on occasion, yes.

But by far what I run for is the adventure.

I am flying.

Flying down a trail, over a hill, and around a hairpin curve brushing past the foliage reaching out across the narrow path.

It did not start out this way.

For the first couple of years, yeah years, I was stuck in a beginners rut. We do beginner runners such a disservice giving them rules to build into and goals to which they then aspire. How many beginner runners start to either “get in shape” or “participate in some race” thinking that fitness and competition are the best parts of the sport? How many don’t get in shape or don’t “win” the race and stumble back to the couch?

During the pandemic years I started hosting what I called Adventure Runs. I would post a meeting location. I would roughly plan a route (usually never having run at that location myself). Set a time, arrive, and just run.

We were not there for fitness or time or training or any of that. It was perfect timing for such things because most races had been cancelled or limited, people were bored and lonely, and the world was damn near empty of pedestrians.

We flew down new trails, clambered over low hills, and traced unexplored hairpin curves in dense forests that had grown there for decades but which rarely saw more than a few humans on any given day.

Adventure.

Adventure is ill-defined. I can set you specific goals for fitness. I can tell you what numbers makes for a good pace. I can adjudicate your finish time in a race. I can see the appeal of quantitative measures against which we can guage our so-called enjoyment of this activity. But adventure? Adventure is raw quality. Adventure is about the feel of it, how your heart sings in the moment and how you end some span of time spent away from everything else, flying, climbing, swerving through the woods feeling unlike anything else.

I’ve been thinking about adventure again. I have been trying to bottle that effort into a coherent plan for the upcoming summer months. I have been getting myself ready to fly again.