The Ideal of the Unconquerable Runner

One of the most demeaning things one can experience is any event that renders him a victim. I have been bullied before and experienced the shame and degredation of not being able to do anything about it. The sickening sense of helplessness and the realization of the futility of trying to do anything only made my humiliation more acute.

I have also had moments of despair at feeling blocked from pursuing dreams or achieving particular goals. Life is full of complexities and hierarchies of needs that often relegate some of the most sought after features of life unattainable. Such "realities" have been especially frustrating, more so when life demands appear so uncompromising.

Victimized, undermined, and circumvented: all three words describe some form of conquest, or rather the condition of being conquered. In a very real sense the nature of living in a finite and limited world necessitates that we all will experience victimhood at some point. Our peers and fellow human beings share in this struggle and seek to maximize their own power and influence, to secure their own well-being and that of their friends and family, even at our expense.

Given this struggle in conditions made up of necessity and scarce resources, where does an ideal such as the unconquerable runner fit in? Runners race competitively against each other with clear winners and losers, victors and vanquished. Every runner, no matter how fast, at some point in some race will fall short of first place.

I find this ideal most fitting within the framework of my life struggle, not the specifics of any one race.  As long as I continue to run, drive myself and strive to improve upon my earlier accomplishments.  As long as I seek out excellence in the struggle for faster times and listen carefully to my body and its warning signals.  As long as I honestly put my all into every race and hold back no reserves.  As long as I embrace pain as the indelicate schoolmaster who must be accepted and yet never ignored.  As long as I step up to the line with my peers, rubbing shoulders with others who invest hours on black asphalt, I will always stand unconquerable.

Running is one of the few dimensions of life where I can truly envision a state of invincibility.  This unassailable condition does not describe the body or heart but an orientation towards life and the world.  By striving to become the unconquerable runner, I accept the limitations of a finite existence wherein only so much oxygen can be carried by my lungs and heart.  I accept that my legs can only turn over so fast.  I accept that muscles will break down and that joints can and do fail.  But, I refuse to stop pushing those boundaries.  The unconquerable runner draws upon every resource available at his disposal to face those limitations with each race.  Such invincibility laces up the shoes at ungodly hours in order to condition, train and cultivate the capacity to smash yet another barrier, to realize the ultimate victory of becoming more than he was the day before, to come one step closer to embodying the higher man.

The unconquerable runner never truly knows defeat because he never surrenders his cause and untiring efforts to overcome himself.  As I struggle to realize this ideal I am surprised to find the vicissitudes of other aspects of life swallowed up and rendered powerless.  I am no longer held hostage and overcome but stand unbowed.  The unconquerable runner is now little more than an abstract ideal, but with each stride under the blistering sun he becomes as real as the sweat that trickles down my temples.