Running matters

The attack on the Boston Marathon was a rude shock.

Millions of people worldwide who either participate in such events or simply go for the occasional run, would ask — why?

The running fraternity is bonded together by the exploration of a simple, enjoyable human activity; one of the most easily accessed activities in the world. You run because it takes so little to run. So — why target runners? Reports said the attackers positioned some of the explosives close to the finishing line where runners eventually arrive.

The modern competitive human demands that every run have a goal. In races, it’s the finishing line.

Unlike in a race, the majority of us running every morning are probably delighting in the activity’s potential to keep the world at bay. We run away from problems accrued till yesterday, sweat it out and return with brain rebooted to clarity. Some have got so addicted to this existence that, metaphorically, they don’t return. They become evangelists for running.

While the toll in Boston as I write this is three dead and 140 injured, the pain will be shared by the larger fraternity worldwide, many of who may have finished their morning run to be greeted by this news.

Two sides of event

News of people killed at sporting events leaves you numb for it is exactly those dark forces we strive to keep in check by expending ourselves through exhaustion that have reached in and maimed us.

Strangely, death at a marathon is not new. In the old story, Pheidippides collapses and dies after his legendary run. One wonders if anything less would have inspired the architects of the modern Olympic Games to choose this endurance run as a showcase event.

Had Pheidippides lived, would the marathon be so iconic? In a strange way, the imagination of event managers of the benign kind, who create sporting events around something riveting, is not much different from the more grim lot, who specialise in attacking such events to shock us.

Years ago, the attack at Munich was possible because we collected our athletes to one place as Olympics. Should we then discourage staged events and support more the daily habit of individuals out on their own separate runs? Should the latter and not events, be the global movement?

Without doubt, the latter — running free — IS the real movement to be supported.

Movement

However discouraging, larger constructs such as staged events, do not cut ice because that would be to hand over the control of our lives, our freedom, to attackers, such as those who struck in Boston. True, courtesy proliferating media which trades focus on activity for opportunity to make a statement, running too has its share of avoidable hype that helps only the business side of running. There is the celebrity brigade; the regime of participation certificates and graduation through staged events, which merely serve to reinforce sport as event management industry instead of liberating it as activity.

Yet it is impossible to shackle running. Inherently simple, running is a graceful, democratic leveller capable of growing a fraternity based on better sense of self. Events help congregate the fraternity. The world persisted with Olympics after Munich.

But it has become too big to mean anything, except maybe massive investment in urban infrastructure masquerading as sport. In contrast, world championships and gatherings of people from the same sport appear tomorrow’s trend, for they pose depth and meaning to the intensely faithful. The Boston Marathon and its ilk worldwide must continue.

Let us not, as knee-jerk reaction to what happened in Boston, question running events in India.

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

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