Remembering George Sheehan, the Running Philosopher

 [written on November 1, 2020]  

27 years ago today, Dr. George Sheehan died. I looked him up for another reason this morning and saw the anniversary coincidence. If you do not recognize the name, you are likely not a "runner".

Back in the 1960's there were no real recreational runners - other than the occasional odd duck. And then in 1968 along came Dr. Kenneth Cooper and his book on "Aerobics", highly touted in a Readers Digest article that year, and people, initially mostly men, started lacing up their Keds and getting out to jog in their neighborhoods. The idea was considered radical at the time - for middle aged people to get out and run and do exercises to make their hearts work harder. At the time, about 40% of the US adult population were smokers. The idea of running your way to health came along right after the Surgeon General's first report on the dangers of smoking. Great timing. The idea of getting fit caught on with the middle aged Greatest Generation. The "Jogging Craze" swept the country. Click through to see Farrah and Lee! People were running in the parks, on the streets, and in weekend races. Shoe and apparel manufacturers noticed, and new industries developed around the running shoe and jogging clothes. All of that is still with us today. Recreational running is a lifestyle that people choose.

Where does Dr. George Sheehan fit in this history? If Dr. Cooper was the father of the running craze, Dr. Sheehan was the philosopher of the movement. He had run track as a young man, but put it far behind him when he became a medical doctor. And yet in his 40's, his own mid-life crisis led him back to his running roots: In 1962, "I found running," he said, "and that made it the best year of my life. I was in middle-age melancholia. I had to pull the emergency cord and get off the train. Before I ran, I was getting bombed every weekend. I didn't smoke because I was too cheap."

But in addition to a return to running, Dr. Sheehan began to write - about running and life. First in local magazines and then in a series of books, Dr. Sheehan explored the psychology of the person who is drawn to running. First, he convinced us to get off the couch, and out of the stands, and back into the game of life:

"“From the moment you become a spectator, everything is downhill. It is a life that ends before the cheering and the shouting die.”

And in describing this solitary person who goes out in the dark and the wet and the cold to run alone on the neighborhood roads, he captured in words what some of us were feeling in our hearts:

“He runs because he has to. Because in being a runner, in moving through pain and fatigue and suffering, in imposing stress upon stress, in eliminating all but the necessities of life, he is fulfilling himself and becoming the person he is.”

It is hard to pick just one quote - he is very quotable, and in turn in his writing he quotes the great authors who have made many of the same points, Ortega, Cervantes, Tolstoy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Chesterton, Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jung, Emerson, Thoreau and William James. I take notes when I read his books, and tell myself I need to go off and read these other great authors. And sometimes I actually do.

At the end of his life, dying of prostate cancer, he wrote about what he was going through with a doctor's detachment. And he fought against the dying of the light with all of the courage and strength of the long distance runner. His last entry was several days before his death on November 1, 1993. His book, "Going the Distance" was published after his death.

Years later, Barb and I hiked the Grand Canyon, rim to rim, with a stop for two nights at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. We hiked in with small backpacks with a change of clothes and our food and water and little else. But I brought with me Dr. Sheehan's "Running and Being". The morning after our hike in, I immersed myself in the stream that runs through the campground, looking up from the bottom of the Grand Canyon - being completely surrounded by the experience and the beauty and the majesty of the location. For me, this was a "peak life" experience. Where you tell yourself, "Remember this moment - because life does not get any better than what you are experiencing right now." But it did get better, because lying in that stream, I also immersed myself in what has been for me the inspiring words of Dr. Sheehan, who always seemed to know what was going on in my heart at times like these.

"People begin running for any number of motives, but we stick to it for one basic reason: to find out who we really are."

Coming across that coincidence this morning of the anniversary of his death, I wanted to remember the man, and to thank him for the influence he has had on my life. And pay him forward to those of you who may step to the beat of a different drummer.