“A race,” the young legend Steve Prefontaine informed the old legend Bill Bowerman, “is a work of art.” But I take the concept a step further: A run is a work of art. Call it grandiose, call it ridiculous, but this is where my own running and thinking have evolved. There is a way now in which each run becomes an act of imagination. Maybe this is because I tend to set out on my runs with little in the way of a plan in mind. Gone are the days of following a program, of running my finger down the chart and finding the marching orders: “2-mile warm-up, 5-mile tempo at 5K pace + 20, 2 miles easy.” But even if I were doing runs like that, I don’t have any doubt that they’d still feel like they were a small treasure spun from nothing. I know that afterward, in the shower or cooking dinner, a mysterious and indescribable but somehow real picture of that run would flash through my mind, where it would exist forever, a unique creation, with its own shape and texture.
– Pete Danko
(image via Wikimedia Commons)
