Does running make you a better person? Patience
- Peter Jeffers
- May 22
- 3 min read
Patience
The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious. Or, in other words, being a runner.
Running, whether you're a beginner or a seasoned veteran, an amateur or a pro, is all about patience. It involves trusting the process even when it feels useless, accepting what we can't change, and focusing on what we can or how we react to setbacks. Patience is critical to progress.
Progress
development towards an improved or more advanced condition.
Running is not always fun. It can be fraught with setbacks and hard times, and if you want to maintain form or progress, you will have to master the life-hiding art of "Patience."
While running gives you all the running highs, increased fitness, improved physique, friends, and a local (plus international) community, its greatest gift is surely patience. After all, it is this one that benefits those around us the most.
I asked journalist and local runner Andrew Cawthorne what he thought running had given him, and specifically whether it had made him a better person.
"Running has given me so much that I could wax lyrical and bore you for an awfully long time on this subject - do you have a few hours?
For starters, running during my three decades as a foreign correspondent for Reuters has given me some of the most surreal and crazy experiences of my life.
Once, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, I was jogging around the perimeter of Saddam Hussein's recently captured palace in Tikrit on the banks of the River Euphrates with a torch when a U.S. patrol came rushing towards me in a Humvee, screaming that I was lighting myself up to be shot at by insurgents outside! While reporting on violence in Northern Ireland, I went for a 'stress-easing' run in Belfast only to be stopped in a dingy backstreet by a group of men with guns who accused me of being a British spy and held a mock trial to scare me, before laughing and sending me on my way. It wasn't all so scary. While I was living in Cuba, I used to run nearly daily on pristine Caribbean beaches, and in Kenya, I had the privilege - and humiliation - of running with some Olympic athletes while doing a story on their high-altitude training.
Coming home to Staffordshire a few years ago, running in the Stone area enabled me to settle back and has made me so happy! It's given me an incredible group of kind and fun friends, a lovely proximity to nature, way better fitness, and masses of laughs and great conversations out there on the roads and trails. Running undoubtedly makes us better people. I've found myself calmer in all aspects of life, more appreciative of the beauty in front of my eyes, acutely aware of the importance of community, and way more patient. The discipline and regularity of running mirror life - showing how you have to stick at something and commit to it and quietly work away at it, even when it hurts, if you want the rewards."
Andrew has summed it up in his last paragraph: Running helps us connect to people and places, grounds us, and gives us an appreciation of where we are. These connections can be so strong that we keep going back to our run, even though we know it might not be easy, because we know the rewards for us all are worth it.
So all that's left is for you to lace up and make your world better one run at a time. Oh, and according to Andrew, he nutmegged Maradonna just after this picture was taken. Next week, we will be talking about honesty ;-)
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