2017_BC-SummerEnquirer-Digital

05
May I Rant Please?
By Micah Ward
Take off your running shoes and put on your boots, your steel toed construction boots if you have
them. I’m going to step on toes here. As Mel Gibson said in Braveheart, “I’ve come to pick a fight.”
Several years ago I was running in the hot and humid monstrosity that is summer in Savannah, GA.
It was my lunch break so I was getting in a sweltering 4 miles instead of doing laps around the pizza
buffet. A car slowed down from behind and I saw that it was a doctor who I occasionally encountered
at work. He said I should be going to the YMCA with him to work out on the elliptical. I didn’t talk to
him too long as he drove along beside me, but the gist of it is that he is a typical know-it-all who thinks
running will destroy my knees and I’ll get a better workout on the elliptical. I tried to tell him that I
was training for an upcoming race and races aren’t run on ellipticals. But he still insisted that I would
get a better workout. I waved him off so I could run on in peace but what I should have said was, “It
ain’t about the workout, it’s about the run!”
I RUN. Plain and simple. I don’t elliptical. I run outdoors to feel the sun and the wind, to power up the
hills and float back down, to feel the rain, to sweat out the hot summer days and endure through the