Recently my cousin told me that she had seen me out "jogging" and I quickly corrected her, "I don't jog, I run."
It made me think... what makes me a runner and not a jogger? And just when did that transition happen?
I have never felt that I was a jogger, even when I first started out and was slow as a snail. I guess at first I jogged, but it wasn't long before I would let people know that I RUN, I went for a RUN, I'm going to go for a RUN... never did I use the term JOG. I felt it belittled my sport.
Shortly after that exchange I came across a paragraph in the book "Complete Book of Women's Running" that describes exactly how I feel about being a runner, not a jogger;
"Women turn from joggers to runners for different reasons and at different stages. For one woman, the transformation might occur when she realizes that she no longer runs to keep her weight down but rather to keep her sanity." "Once a woman becomes a runner, she finds that the sport is woven into the fabric of her life. Whereas running might have been only a vehicle before -- to fitness or to weight loss, for example -- it now becomes that rarest of things: a means and an end. To a runner, running is still a means of strength and health, of exploration and socialization. But unlike the jogger, who seeks only external results, the runner finds that the very act itself is enough; running is the thing she craves." "When a woman knows this feeling, she knows that she cannot do without running. And thus is born a runner."
Ok, maybe it was a little more than a paragraph. But upon reading this I thought, "Aha, this is it. THIS is what makes me a runner." I cannot live without running. I do not want to live without it. It IS woven into the fabric of my life. I feel that I cannot describe who I am without saying that I'm a runner. I am a mother, I am a wife, and I am a RUNNER.