One recent morning, I found myself signing up for yet another half marathon and briefly pulled up short at the following question: Why are you registering for the Marin Half Marathon?
“Because I cannot afford traditional forms of therapy,” I typed into the field of the online form. I thought about it for a moment before clicking through the signup process for the March 30 event.
The response was intended to be facetious, but in order for comedy to work, there must be a crumb of reality involved, or so I’ve heard.
I clicked on through, eventually and unapologetically relinquishing my $120 registration fee, and soon found myself looking at the website for Run Wine Country at www.runwinecountry.com.
Run Wine Country is a series of three half-marathons beginning on May 19 with the Windsor Green Half Marathon and progressing to Water to Wine on Aug. 11, ending with the Healdsburg Half on Oct. 20. As a bonus, anyone who finishes all three gets a special label bottle of wine.
Before long, I was kissing goodbye another $65 thinking about how expensive my running habit had become.
I thought back over the events that led up to signing up for yet another half-marathon — 13.1 miles — after doing two in 2012.
It all started out so innocently two years ago, when I started walking to lose the weight I’d gained passing the age of 40.
My wife had given me a pedometer as a gift, so I started walking that dreary winter and before long, I was obsessively counting steps and miles, striving every day to get in my 10,000 steps — about five to six miles — and beat each week’s mileage.
By the end of 2011, I was topping 30 miles per week on a regular basis.
Then 2012 came along and I decided to start running.
Like all addicts, I started out small with a walk/run program and then a few “gateway runs”: A 5K “fun run” here, a 10K there. All the while, I increased my mileage to the point where I was walking or running more than 40 miles per week.
I was okay at first. The small, non-competitive runs were keeping me satisfied and there were days when I’d walk 10, 12 or 14 miles on the hills near my house. Running a half marathon was vaguely on the radar, but I wanted to take things slowly because I lived in mortal fear of blowing out my knees or having some other life-altering injury.
But then a good friend told me about the Healdsburg Half Marathon, so if figured “Okay. I can do that.” After all, I was already running about 20 miles per week and it seemed to be only a matter of rearranging the miles so that the bulk of them were on one day.
So I quickly signed up and began to furiously search the Internet for training tips and running schedules.
I ran Healdsburg in a fairly respectable time for a novice past the age of 50 and decided to take a road trip to Tucson for the Damascus Bakeries Half Marathon last December. I liked to think of it as the “Half Baked” half marathon.
For Healdsburg, I trained, watched what I was eating and avoided beer for several weeks.
Tucson was a different animal though. My training table included bar food and ale, and part of my pre-race preparation was an Alex Karras memorial celebration with my aging golf buddies.
Suffice it to say, I suffered quite a bit the last six miles or so — despite a course that was all downhill — but as I told my running friends, life is an experiment, right? The worst that could happen would be to drop out or expire in a heap at the side of the road, right?
So now the experiment continues, as I’ve signed up for Marin and the first two wine country events, Windsor and Water to Wine.
The Run Wine Country series began six years ago, when Events With Sole’s Director Brad Iling orchestrated the first Healdsburg Half Marathon.
The event was such a success, Iling added Windsor the following year and three years ago added Water to Wine, which begins at Lake Sonoma and ends in Healdsburg.
Runners of all levels participate in the events, Iling said, from Boston Marathon qualifiers to “back of the packers” that finish in the three hour range.
“They’re all over the place as far as levels and come from all over the place,” he said. “At Healdsburg last year, we had runners from all 50 states and eight different countries.”
Iling had to stop running about a year ago after having back surgery that he believes was due in part to his 30 years of running.
“I overran myself with all those years of running,” he said. He cross-trains now though, riding his bicycle and doing other types of exercise, but continues his running habit by putting on events and maintaining the website.
So all of this signing up for half marathons from the comfort of my home office had me wondering if my relationship with running was merely a hobby, an obsession or whether I was on the verge of a full-blown addiction.
I spoke to Glenn Brassington, Ph.D., a professor of Psychology at Sonoma State University, who specializes in sports psychology.
Brassington has worked with a wide range of athletes, from high school to college and professional sports figures.
“It varies a lot depending on the level of motivation,” he said in response to questions about my fear of addiction. “For a lot of people, both amateur and professional, the biggest factor is what is the motivation for running? How much do they do it to avoid dealing with other issues in their lives?”
He added that doing any activity, including such things as eating disorders or working obsessively, creates biochemical reactions that the individual seeks because of the way it makes them feel.
The avoidance thing gave me pause for a moment, as I delved into my own mind to decide how much I ran for health and how much was simply running away.
But on the other hand, living in mortal fear of injury seems to be a plus.
“It’s indicative of someone not addicted: Worrying about injury and not allowing it to seriously affect other aspects of their lives indicates it’s not an addiction,” Brassington said. “Someone addicted will do it without worrying about the cost of doing the activity.”
So, even if I never become a professional athlete — not likely, as I’m a slow 52-year-old running hobbyist — there are rewards beyond spending money online that I don’t have.
As long as my legs hold out, I’ve developed a healthy habit that takes me away from computer screens and technology.
And, should I complete the triad of Run Wine Country, at least I have that custom bottle of wine waiting for me at the end.
