I finally figured out the reason why people enjoy running and you'll never guess!
With me gaining 40 pounds and recently dropping out of college, my stepfather, Ken told me that he was tired of seeing me moping around the house.
One spring afternoon, he sat me down and said "Grace you're too young to be depressed like this all of the time. Why don't you go out for a jog or something to try to make yourself feel better?"
"You know the thought of even having to walk makes me sick!" I replied in an unhappy tone.
"Well you just trained your brain to think that way, so I'm going to give you an incentive to try to help you unlearn your bad habits" Ken said.
"Oh yeah, what's that?" I unenthusiastically asked.
"I'll buy you whatever car you want and help pay for your own apartment. If you are able to build yourself up to run 10 miles straight at an eight minute per mile pace in 11 months from now!" Ken exclaimed in a hyper tone.
"That's impossible, I can't even walk a mile in a half hour." I responded.
"So you better get started if you want that car and apartment or you'll be stuck here with your mother and I riding the bus!" Ken sarcastically responded.
"So are we talking about a Ford or a Tesla?" I responded.
"If your able to do that pace for 10 miles then I'll buy you the Tesla or whatever else you want, on top of helping you pay for the apartment" Ken responded.
I looked out through the backyard window onto the public trail and it looked sunny out, probably close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I told myself that I better take advantage of this opportunity because, I know Ken has the money to follow through with the incentive that he just promised me.
I put my sneakers on and not since the eighth grade basketball team have I attempted to try anything sports related. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and went onto the trail.
I said to myself, here I go as I put one arm in front of the other. My body felt like a rusted bicycle that was left outside for 10 years on top of being stuck on the hardest gear possible.
I barely started moving like a huge locomotive leaving the station and right away my joints started killing me. I knew where the mile markers were located on the trail so if I could slowly make it to the next mile point then walk a mile and repeat that for 10 miles, then I would consider that a huge success.
I looked and felt awful as I finished my first mile in 13 minutes. I knew I was going to need the next mile of walking just to stop my laborious breathing.
The next mile came and I slowed jogged again where my pace was even slower at 13:30 when I finished the mile, but I told myself at least I finished the whole mile jogging.
I was now on my ninth and final mile where I felt absolutely horrible, but I was actually impressed that I had made it thus far. As I looked like someone who was being pummeled by Mohamed Ali, I was absolutely amazed by the people who ran passed me who seemingly loved running. I just couldn't understand how I just wanted to die and these people were whizzing past me in absolute bliss.
I barely made it back to the house and I was astonished that I completed the 10 miles, where I got no joy other than the sense of accomplishment. I was going to start dieting and do this exercise routine six days a week, because I really wanted that Tesla.
I reluctantly got up the next morning to beat the afternoon heat and did the same routine of alternating five miles of walking with five of jogging. Once again I looked like something that needed to be put down out of its misery, while the real athletes were loving the physical workout of being on the trail.
A month has gone by and I've lost 15 pounds but I absolutely despise each day that I have to get on the trail. I'm still alternating miles but now I do a total of seven miles jogging and three miles walking with my average jogging pace being 12 minute miles.
As I'm jogging my last mile and being that tomorrow is Sunday, which is my day off, I decide that I'm going to push myself so nobody has the opportunity to pass me. As my still overweight self trudges along, I'm a bit startled as this gazelle of a woman sneaks past me as we both come up to an exaggerated curve. I tell myself to speed it up so maybe I can at least catch up to her.
As I made it around the same exaggerated curve, I said "that's impossible" as she just completely vanished and there was about a half mile of straight away after the curve.
Now I was more interested in what happened to that female runner than my actual jogging time. With the creek on the one side and thick woods on the other side it was virtually impossible for her to go anywhere without me seeing her. I even stopped and looked around the woods which was pointless because I would have heard her rumbling through the fallen dead branches or at least had easily seen her meandering through the woods.
After a few minutes, I gave up looking for her and jogged home.
I got some water out of my backyard spikette and just when my water bottle was completely filled, I put my head up and said "What the hell is going on!" As the same woman jogger came past my Backyard and she was completely oblivious to me, where she had the biggest grin on her face.
No matter what science or logic I used in my head, her reappearance on the trail made no sense to me. I was just as baffled seeing her reappear as when I saw her disappear. This will be one of those moments that I will remember for the rest of my life.
I went back inside and did nothing more than relax the remainder of the day. My mom and Ken were both overly complimentary to me on my overall appearance. The next day, I looked online at paranormal research to try to figure out the unworldliness of that female jogger's reappearance. My online research was pointing me in the direction of ghost and spirits which I was a bit skeptical of and felt it didn't fit the bill for this woman because she was sweating pretty profusely and I felt sweating wasn't a phenomenon that ghosts would need to perform.
Monday came and I started my dreaded workout routine. I decided to slow jog the entire 10 miles versus doing intervals.
When I was finished, I was just amazed that I was able to do the whole 10 miles without stopping, which I repeated for the remainder of the week.
Though my pace was only 12 minute miles and I hated every step of the 10 miles, I was really impressed that I'm able to do it now without stopping. I felt like the Tesla is being dangled at the end of a stick and I'm trying to chase it, knowing that I would never be able be to afford the car on my own, so I better be fast enough for Ken to buy it for me.
The weeks kept going by and I can now do 10 miles at a 10 minute pace with four and a half months left on my incentive with Ken. The goal seems doubtful but I'm going to keep on trying.
With my desperation setting in I really focused on increasing my speed towards the end of the 10 mile run. So on this Wednesday morning, I pushed myself at the eight mile mark, then when I got to the nine mile mark a middle aged male started to come up from behind me and I knew I couldn't keep his pace. He got to the infamous nine mile curve in the trail before I did and he really turned the speed on, which I did the same. He was no more than 20 yards in front of me and when I got to the curve, he was entering the straightaway. This time to my astonishment the guy really did just vanish out of the thin air.
Part of me thinks, he didn't think I was going to be able to speed up so much to get that split second glimpse of him disappearing, but that's exactly what he did, he just disappeared.
I told myself that I wasn't going anywhere until I figured out the reason why these people were vanishing into the thin air. I surveyed all the surroundings and noted that the trail was gravel at the curve and then went to pavement and still had the same woods on the one side and the creek on the other side.
Because I couldn't see any logical explanation of why this guy disappeared, I decided to hideout in the woods and sit and wait to see if he would reappear.
As I sat on a log anxiously awaiting, not long after I said "Holy Crap" as I saw his head then followed by the rest of his body literally come up from the paved portion of the trail. Then the ground of trail instantaneously closed off again. The runner had the biggest smile on his face, so much so that I wanted to feel whatever what was making him feel so happy.
I went back to the trail and was amazed on how the portion of the trail that opened and closed was seamless to the point where I couldn't see any variation of where the gravel met the pavement.
I really didn't know what to do with this information because nobody was hurt and more importantly I knew nobody would believe me. So the only solution that I could come up with was running that curve as fastest that I could then hopefully the same would happen to me.
This idea seemed like I going on the biggest and fastest roller coaster in the world where I was both terrified and excited at the same time. I just want to feel whatever happiness and joy those two people were experiencing.
As I look back on my life, I was pretty miserable in high school and I dropped out of college so I'm tired of feeling glum all the time and I hopefully want an out of this world experience that would make life worth living.
I even changed my trail route to do the same half mile loop and just focus on that one curve where every time I would approach it I would go as fast as I could so I could hopefully fall through like the other two runners did.
Each day I would do 20 loops for a total of 10 miles and nothing happened, so I stepped up my dieting to help me loose more weight so I could go faster. I noticed by the end of each week I was progressively getting faster and faster.
On a Thursday morning, on my 19th loop which would be my second to last one, I hit that curve so fast fast, where I just closed my eyes and for a brief moment I felt like a long jumper in the Olympics hurling through the sky.
When I opened my eyes, I realized that I had fallen through the trail which seemed so painless and effortless. Words couldn't describe the type of people who cohabitated below the trail. Perhaps they could best be described as having dwarfism, but I definitely questioned if they were full humans and maybe more of neanderthals or another extinct human like species.
While I was down in this underground encampment, I noted the area was kept purposely dark, where I was limited in what I could see. I stood and held onto two metal railings and one of the human type "things" put a helmet onto of my head. Once the helmet was put on, I quickly got this extreme euphoric feeling that resonated through my arms while holding onto the metal railings and went all the way up to my head through the helmet. It was like chocolate and cocaine times a thousand. I never felt the back, front, and sides of my brain all get lit up and stimulated at the same time.
As quickly as it started, then it was over. I was hoisted back onto the trail and I was feeling an extreme amount of euphoria like every guy in the world wanted to date me. I couldn't even think of anything negative if I tried my hardest.
This feeling lasted until the next day and now my motivation was to continue to loose weight so I wouldn't have any issues reaching the speed I needed to fall down into the trail again.
Even the days when I wasn't brought down, which I assumed was because I couldn't get a fast enough running pace, I still had a euphoric residual affect that didn't stop me from trying the following day, where I would eventually fall through the trail and have one of the nice human like "things" put the helmet on me.
As I approached the end of Ken's incentive period and I was getting ready to go out to the trail Ken said "It's been nine months and I've been tracking your pace times which look really impressive! Do you want to see if it's time for me to buy you a Tesla?"
My mother chimed in and said "Grace, you look like an Olympic sprinter. You really transformed your whole body!"
I nonchalantly brushed it off and said "Oh I totally forgot about the car. You know what, I'm not interested in the incentive anymore Ken, but Thank You for getting me interested in running."
Ken scratched his head in confusion and said "OK, I guess."
I was really more focused on falling through the trail and the euphoric feeling of having the helmet put on me then having some stupid car.
I haven't picked up on what exactly causes me to fall down into the trail other than me pushing myself to go faster but that's not a guarantee that it will happen all the time and also I learned there are other openings to fall down into not only on this trail but on others as well.
I'm fairly certain the "things" that live under the trail have some type of symbiotic relationship with whatever they get out of putting that helmet on my head and running what seems like an energy force through my nerves, where both they benefit and I benefit.
Only time will tell if I die young or develop some type of incurable disease, but for right now I really don't care because I've developed a like for running and a love for when I'm propelled down below the trail.
Credited to mtp6921
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