Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth

Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you're doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourslef that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It's only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it's hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled.

Running is a brutal and emotional sport. It's also a simple, primal sport. As humans, on a most basic level, we get hungry, we sleep, we yearn for love, we run.

If we push on, we begin to feel a vague, tingling sense of who, or what, we really are. It's a powerful feeling, strong enough to have us coming back for more, again and again.

Perhaps it is to fulfill this primal urge that runners and joggers get up every morning and pound the streets in cities all over the world. To feel the stirring of something primeval deep down in the pits of our bellies. To feel "a little bit wild." Running is not exactly fun. Running hurts. It takes effort. Ask any runner why he runs, and he will probably look at you with a wry smile and say, "I don't know." But something keeps us going. We may obsess about our PBs and mileage count, but these things alone are not enough to get us out running... What really drives us is something else, this need to feel human, to reach below the multitude of layers of roles and responsibilites that societ y has placed on us, down below the company name tags, and even the father, husband, and son, labels, to the pure, raw human being underneath. At such moments, our rational mind becomes redundant. We move from thought to feeling.

Running is a simple activity. Just lace up your shoes and go, one step at a time, like each breath.

One woman tells me, as we sit on the grass afterwards, that she thinks running is like getting drunk in reverse. With drinking, it feels great at first, but then you start feeling awful. With running, you feel awful first, but then, after you finish, you feel great. That sounds like a much better deal. *

Of course I can't give up. I've come too far for that. Running is a simple activity. Just lace up your shoes and go, one step at a time, like each breath. But the question is, where do I go from here?