People who haven’t been to races aren’t going to know this, so you’ll just have to take my word for it until you see it for yourself: You’d be hard-pressed to find an event more filled with smiles and unambiguous goodwill than your local road race. Put another way, why should you race? Because it’s fun!
A road race is the closest thing to a mobile party that I can think of. (Well, the closest legal thing.) Everywhere you look, there are smiles, cheers, laughs, and heartfelt congratulations from one runner to another. There’s music before and after (sometimes even during), there’s great food after, prizes are given out, and kids are roaming all around—sounds more like a circus than someplace where a bunch of skinny masochists gather to be miserable together, doesn’t it?
Of course, most people aren’t laughing it up and smiling during the race; they’re working pretty darned hard. But that effort explains the festive atmosphere afterward. The runners have pushed and challenged themselves, and now they’re all celebrating the sense of accomplishment that doing so brings.
In life, isn’t one extreme of something usually more enjoyable if you’ve recently been near the other extreme? Isn’t a sunny day more special when it’s been raining for a week than when it’s the 10th bright day in a row? Doesn’t your easy chair feel best when you’ve been working your hardest? That’s why races are so much fun. Once you’ve experienced a race, you’ll agree with me that there’s a certain kind of fun that comes from challenging yourself within sharply defined parameters while others around you are doing the same.
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