Abstract
This essay introduces the basis of the book by resituating how we should think about running. Running is both a natural and learned form of locomotion. It is a form of enskilled movement that we learn at a very young age. Learning how to move and how to sense those movements are crucial elements to the emergence of the human mind. Thus, running is so much more than a lifestyle sport mostly enjoyed by the white middle classes based on the value of endurance. Rather, our first running steps facilitate the emergence of the human mind and thus one of the ways we become human beings. This introductory essay then lays the groundwork for the three entangled essays that comprise the whole of this book and mirrors the dynamic of mind, environs and body that leads to our becoming human.
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- 1.
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn. (New York: HarperCollins, 1977), p. 191.
- 2.
See, for example, Julian Goater and Don Melvin, The Art of Running Faster (Champaign: Human Kinetics, 2012); Jean-Francois Harvey, Run Better: How to Improve Your Running Technique and Prevent Injury (Toronto: Greystone Books, 2017); Jason Karp, Run Your Fat Off: Running Smarter for a Leaner, Fitter You (New York: Reader’s Digest, 2017).
- 3.
See, for example, Alexandra Heminsley, Running Like a Girl (London: Random House, 2013); Philip Hewitt, Keep on Running, The Highs and Lows of a Marathon Addict (Chichester: Summersdale Publishing, 2012); Lisa Jackson, Your Pace or Mine? What Running Taught Me about Life, Laughter, and Coming Last (Chichester: Summersdale Publishing, 2016).
- 4.
Marcel Mauss “Techniques of the Body” in Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Modern Life. Ed. Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 50–68.
- 5.
Peter Nabokov, Indian Running (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1981).
- 6.
William Bridel, Pirkko Markula, and Jim Denison, eds, Endurance Running: A Socio-cultural Examination (London: Routledge, 2016).
- 7.
Jon P. Mitchell, “Ritual Transformation and Selfhood in Urban Marathon Running” in Religious Diversity Today: Experiencing Religion in the Contemporary World, Volume 2: Ritual and Pilgrimage, ed. Anastasia Panagakos (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2016), pp. 1–20.
- 8.
Simon Coleman and Tamara Kohn, eds, The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of ‘Recreation’ (New York: Berghahn, 2007).
- 9.
John Bale, Running Cultures: Racing in Time and Space. (London: Routledge, 2004).
- 10.
Slavoj Zizek, Event: Philosophy in Transit. (London: Penguin, 2014).
- 11.
Developmental psychologist Dr. Esther Thelen explained these processes much clearer than I can here in this space. She demonstrated that infants’ learning occurred through a complicated interaction involving the brain, the environment, the baby’s growing awareness of its body and other factors. Her articles that inform my argument include: Esther Thelen, 2005, “Dynamic Systems Theory and the Complexity of Change” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 15(2) (2005): 255–283; Esther Thelen, “Grounded in the World: Developmental Origins of the Embodied Mind” Infancy 1(1) (2000): 3–28; E. Thelen and D. M. Fisher, 1983, “The organization of spontaneous leg movements in newborn infants” Journal of Motor Behavior 15 (1983): 353–377; and B. D. Ulrich, J. L. Jensen, E. Thelen, K. Schneider, and R. F. Zernicke, “Adaptive dynamics of the leg movement patterns of human infants. II. Treadmill stepping in infants and adults” Journal of Motor Behavior 26 (1994): 313–324.
- 12.
John A. Byers, Built for Speed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 100–103; John A. Byers, American Pronghorn: Social Adaptations and the Ghosts of Predators Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 86–99.
- 13.
Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey. (London: Penguin, 2006), p. 108.
- 14.
John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: Dover, 1958); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenges to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2002[1958]).
- 15.
Stephen Hawking, My Brief History. A Memoir (New York: Bantam, 2013).
- 16.
Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack: Thoughts on Meaning and Mortality (London: Granta, 2013).
- 17.
Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Volume 1: Thinking (San Diego: Harcourt and Brace, 1978), p. 83.
- 18.
Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (London: Profile Books, 2010); Toby Tanser, More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2008); Adharanand Finn, Running with the Kenyans: Discovering the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth (London: Faber & Faber, 2012).
- 19.
Steve Chilton, It’s A Hill, Get Over It (Dingwall: Sandstone Press, 2013); Boff Whalley, Run Wild (London: Simon & Schuster, 2012); Richard Askwith, Running Free: A Runner’s Journey Back to Nature (London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2014).
- 20.
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk about When I Talk about Running, trans. Philip Gabriel (London: Harvill Secker, 2008), p. vii.
- 21.
In the US, cross-country is a form of racing in more “natural” settings like golf courses, urban parks, and other “green” spaces. Yet these “natural” setting are entirely constructed by human beings. “Green” spaces are no more apart from humanity than concrete sidewalks and steel and glass skyscrapers.
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Carter, T.F. (2018). First Steps. In: On Running and Becoming Human. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74844-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74844-3_1
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