All characters have an origin story. I am a character I suppose but not any sort of hero let’s get that clear to start. However, once I began my new running life I felt like a new person so it was like having a split personality at times. Within a few weeks of running on a consistent basis I was feeling more confident in myself as the shackles of my own self-doubt began to slide off of me. This was a feeling that was foreign to me. I was used to being very self-conscious. I was used to not having much to say when it came to myself because there was never anything to talk about.
Within a few weeks of running though I began to see and feel a difference and wanted to share this with people. I had already begun to let people know that if I could start a running program than anyone could. It’s amazing how when you try and succeed at something you had felt was impossible nothing seems to be off limits. I had worked out consistently for almost 15 years and looked relatively similar to how I did at the beginning. I had been essentially the same exact person inside for that long as well. The only thing I hadn’t tried was running. It made me wish I had done it sooner but I believe I wasn’t ready for that change of lifestyle.
So here I was only a few weeks into running and loving it. It was warm enough that I could venture outside and run in the spring sun. I would run from my gym down to the beaches and feel the stereotypical ‘runners high’ that was indescribable. I finally went to Hanlon’s Shoes in Hyannis and got fitted for proper running shoes, which made a world of difference. I went with Brooks Adrenaline for beginning runners, I didn’t need anything specific yet.
Running made me feel like a totally new person, made me feel powerful, accomplished. It was never my intention to come up with a running nickname or alter ego. Up until that day I was just a guy that had discovered running and was enjoying the experience more each day. You never know when that moment is going to happen though and it did on what seemed to be another average run on a sunny spring afternoon.
After my Nana had died at the end of 2009 her house where she had lived for more than forty years had to be sold. I had spent countless thousands of hours and days growing up in that house. It was a sad night when the family gathered there for one last hurrah before it was to become someone else’s property. Once it was a done deal I rarely if ever went through the old Boxberry Lane neighborhood. It was too painful to see that house knowing that I could not go inside.
On this day I decided to run from the gym down Nana’s old neighborhood, only a four-mile total run but hey I was still only a month into running period so distance was not a goal. I made the approach down Boxberry Lane thinking it would be neat to run by Nana’s old house. What I saw however changed that. There was Nana’s house but it was different, changed. Gone was her huge rosebush next to the dirt driveway which had bloomed beautifully every year and housed countless numbers of birds as they hid from various prowling cats. Gone was the living room window which faced the road next to where my Nana would sit in her chair and watch TV. In its place was a huge bay window that looked like some sort of plastic surgery gone wrong.
It felt like someone had gone in and surgical changed part of me and my childhood. I felt anger at what I could not stop and could not change. I stood before the ‘new and improved’ house and gritted my teeth and shook my head. I did not want to look upon that monstrosity anymore. I let the anger boil over. Finally I let out a growl and took off like a shot away from the spot that had brought me so much happiness as a child. I ran so fast out of there, ran like a beast to escape what I had seen.
It wasn’t until days later, after I had run possibly the fastest couple of miles back to the gym, and after I had taken time to think about how that run by my Nana’s old house had made me feel that I knew that I had stumbled upon a nickname. The Beast summed up the person that running had made me. I felt powerful, in command of myself, better than I had ever felt in my life. It was my alter-ego. From that day forward I looked forward to my runs as a way to step into Beast Mode and feel that energy, that power. I sound like I am writing a comic book, but a good origin story never hurts. It beats saying I picked a name at random out of a hat or something like that. I ran like a beast, felt powerful like a beast, and got angry like a beast when I saw what had happened to my Nana’s house. It all made sense.
The Beast became a bigger part of who I was as time passed. The self-confidence I got from running began spilling over into other parts of my life. What was once an alter-ego eventually became a whole new way of life, living with confidence was a change that I was embracing fully.
In the end my Beast nickname, alter-ego, and lifestyle came from sadness and anger. I missed my Nana and hated seeing that part of my childhood and my life was forever changed. The Beast was my way of dealing with it. So I have her to thank for a lot of the good that has come from my running. To this day before every race I run and say a prayer to my Nana, she is still as big a part of my life now as she ever was.
Do any of you have running 'alter-egos' or is this purely something I have?
Do any of you have running 'alter-egos' or is this purely something I have?
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| Beast Mode |
