sweat by Sukhchander

I started running last year to train for the Warrior Dash. It was fun and provided an excuse to get in some cardio, so I didn’t really think about the bigger implications.

I ran in ignorance.

Today, on a particularly painful run that clearly 85% of my body did not want to be doing, I realized my folly. I listened to my body and it told me that running wasn’t just a bad idea for me, it is a bad idea for all of us.

History of Running

Let’s peer back in time at our ancient ancestors when all of them ran. You had to run to catch your food, run to move to new hunting grounds, run to escape the jerks in the next settlement over when they came to kill you and steal all your woolly mammoth tusks.

Here is the To Do list for pretty much all of our forebears:

1. Invent wheel
2. Learn to ride horses
3. Hook horses to wheels
4.  Own faster horse/wheel thing than neighbors

Notice the thread? Job One for our ancestors was to STOP running and find as many ways possible to not have to do it again. What happened once this list got out of committee and got some traction?

Civilization!

Running is bad for the human race

A growing number of people think running is fun. Marathons, half-marathons, triathalons, ultra-marathons, megathons, infinithons, and on and on. Every person who laces up a pair of shoes (or slides into some Vibrams) is turning back the clock to a time before we had perfectly good cars and airplanes to get us around. They’re not even running for a good reason. If hungry lions were released behind the runners at a race, at least there would be a sense of neolithic nostalgia about it.

Moving away from the products of our evolution as a species sends a message that we should abandon our modern progress and revert to a dirtier, sweatier, far more dangerous time. We evolved places like McDonald’s and Taco Bell so I don’t have to suit up and go hunt a buffalo every day. We created things like jeans and t-shirts so I can let my deer skinning and tanning skills get really rusty. I love indoor plumbing, the internet, laser beams, and my iPhone.

We can’t let runners take those away from us.

Their time is running out

Next time you see someone running, give them a flier for a nearby car dealership. If they’re listening to their iPod while they run, squirt it with water. Leap out from behind bushes and bite their legs to see how they really like the thrill of the chase.

Write to running event organizers and tell them to grow up and enter the Twenty-First century… or even the Nineteenth if that’s too much for them. Contact your Congressional Representatives and let them know how unAmerican running really is. Demand they take action.

Our ancestors would smack modern day runners right upside the head. If we work together, we can preserve everything they fought so hard to create: a comfy ride.