Reading stories about running makes my heart race. It excites me to be able to image myself in the author’s shoes, beating down a trail, or rounding the corner on a track. While they are out training, these elite running authors have experiences that may only come to me through my imagination stoked by the pages of the many books I keep beloved on my shelf. These stories give me pause and I picture myself running on some of my favorite routes; the edge of a cliff at Land’s end, next to the bison fields in Golden Gate Park, through vineyards in Sonoma Valley. Then I realize that my own stories are waiting for me to experience, and I lace up my shoes.

I believe there is no better way to get lost inside your own mind than to embark on a distance run. This morning I read the beginning of Rachael Toor’s book, “Personal Record; A love affair with Running.” She explains the nuances of the distance run in a very elegant and appropriate way. (Coincidentally, in my own quest to identify why it is that I run-or what I’m running to/from-Rachael’s story is the closest I have been able to find to my own experience.)

Toeing the Line

I like to call it “The Oprah Effect.”

Oprah said to us: If I can do it, anyone can. She had excellent professional trainers, and she did it surrounded by a coterie of helpers. But even the richest woman in the world couldn’t pay someone to run a marathon for her. Oprah Winfrey had to take every step of the 1995 Marine Corps Marathon on her own. She finished in 4:29. This feat, heroic in ways, spawned a cottage industry of silly tee-shirts that said “I beat Oprah.” But Oprah encouraged scores-hundreds, thousands-of middle-aged women, who looked in the mirror and did not see the whippet-thin shape of a distance runner, to hit the roads, and start training for a 26.2 miler. Oprah inspired a bunch of swaggering men to want to go out and beat her time. Al Gore ran the same race two years later. He finished in 4:58.

Anyone can do it. It’s all in the preparation. If you train properly, you should be able to hit your marathon goal-plus or minus five minutes-on race day without a problem. But that doesn’t meant it isn’t hard, or that 26.2 miles isn’t a long darned way to go. If you don’t train well, you may still finish, but it won’t be pretty. Or fun. After crossing the line at the New York City Marathon, squeaking by in less than a minute under three ours, a ragged Lance Armstrong said the marathon was “without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done.”

Some run a marathon to cross it off their life checklist. For others, marathoning becomes an obsession, a habit of mind and body. For me, starting to run was not about losing weight or getting healthy. I began in order not to be excluded; I ran so that I wouldn’t be left behind. I’ve never been much of a joiner, but when I found something I love doing-and realized that there were other people who shared enthusiasm-I joined a running club. There are all kinds of different subculture: gardeners, fly fishers, philatelists, economists, collectors of pig figurines. These are often solitary pursuits, but when a cluster of zealots find ways of coming together-Internet chat groups, conventions, races-we turn into a herd, a pack. We recognize ourselves in each other.

By becoming a runner, I was welcomed by strangers as a comrade, and I gained, as my legs go stronger and my lung capacity increased, an increased and more complex capacity for friendship, especially with men. I have always had a handful of women I hold close-who’s intense friendships I rely on, where we sustain and support each other. Through running I learned not to be one of the boys, but to be myself, a woman among men. I’m not a small talker. I tend to talk about big things, or speak not at all. Running gave me a lingua franca, a common language to share with new acquaintances.

This book is about how I evolved from a bookish egghead who ran only to catch a bus to a runner of ultramarathons. It was a pretty straightforward process and not that unusual: First I got my butt out the door and jogged for a while. I entered some shorter races, and then some longer ones. Then I just kept going. Once I’d done a handful of marathons, I started hanging around with a bunch of guys who used 26.2 milers as training runs for ultras, and poof: I was an ultrarunner. Bothered by the fact that running is a narcissistic activity-it’s all about me, me, me-I got to a point where I wanted to shift the focus from myself. I found ways-pacing, coaching, helping others achieve their goals-to share my fervor that provides rewards beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

While I do not believe that there is such a thing as a runner’s worldview-there are, I would argue, as many ways of thinking and feeling about running as there are runners-we do share certain things. Watching a big marathon is a remarkabel experience. Depending on your vantage, you can spot individual runners, sure, but you also see the way in swhich we all come together as an organism, moving in unison, sharing a common goal. Here, in chapters that alternate with my personal record of becoming a runner, are meditations, examinations, and celebrations of the nuts and bolts of how we each hook into the pack. I look at and think about various aspects and accouterments of a runner’s life: clothes, food, races, racing, injuries, my watch. These things we all share; the things we all have.

I wanted the structure of this book to suggest the shape of a marathon. The way the early miles tick by, quick and light. How the middle part can get slow and hard. Like most difficult activities-writing books, learning to play an instrument, building a relationship-there’s apace. The middle portion is always tough: the transition of moving from something that seems easy at the start to an endeavor that becomes so hard it requires enormous will-in addition to strength-is challenging. It helps to have other people along. At a certain point, it becomes clear that you will make it, though, in a marathon, the last two-tenths of a mile are not trivial.

Running is the act of catching yourself before you fall. It is about keeping yourself upright as you move forward. The faster you go, the more there is at stake. You strike a balance between how hard you can push yourself and still remain in control. You straddle the line between fearless and reckless. At times, even if you are doing everything right, you fall.

During long races, you think about something for a while-sometimes it’s a passing thought or random insight, other times an attempt to work out problems-and then you move on. The thinking is not entirely linear. After a while, you accept this. After a while, you settle in. And then, the mind goes its own way-slowing down, wandering more freely, giving itself over to the body, and finally, ultimately, to the heart.

-Personal Record by Rachael Toor