The only certainty about life for athletes after their playing days is the difficult passage they face. It is the end of what had been their lives. Whether it's a high school athlete who doesn't play sports in college, a college athlete who doesn't make the pros, or a professional who has become accustomed to the lifestyle, the separation is traumatic. ----Richard Lapchick


Running means different things to different people. This is the story of what it means to me. If the story sounds self-serving at times, please forgive me.

For as long as I can remember, the only thing I've wanted to be is an athlete--a great athlete.

From childhood to adulthood, I burned to play baseball, basketball, and tennis. I burned to be a star like my sports heroes. I burned with a fire that consumed me day and night.

I would daydream about athletic greatness during sermons in church. I would hit pebbles fungo-style with a sawed-off broomstick handle in Grandpa and Grandma Greene's back yard. I would be up at 2 am, sitting under the bedcovers with a flashlight, pencil, and scorecard, listening to and scoring the New York Yankees-Kansas City A's extra-inning struggle in Kansas City. And I would play myriad games and tennis matches inside my head--all of which ended with Greene the Hero coolly draining a shot at the buzzer or batting in the winning run or putting away an overhead on match point.

Moreover, I grew up with a bunch of like-minded buddies, driven to excel in sports. Our high-school graduating class numbered only 63, but it produced a group of gung-ho schoolboy athletes that put our little hometown (population 2,000) in central Pennsylvania on the sports map.

By the time I reached my late 20s, my basketball and baseball careers were over and tournament tennis had lost its allure. Gone was the camaraderie of the locker room. Gone were the reference groups that had reinforced my sense of self. Gone was the attention I had craved so much that I was willing to sacrifice my body for it. The newspaper ink that I had routinely garnered was being ladled on the new stars du jour. I had become Everyman, a working stiff who didn't feel particularly special.

Then it was that Providence intervened and showed me that the journey of a human soul toward its true identity lasts a lifetime.

I was coaching high school basketball at the time and had some of my players running on our school's track for conditioning. Leon Woodman, a pro bowler, came to the track every day to run six miles, and one day I decided to run with him. The kids told me he was over 50 years old (read: ancient) so I figured it would be a snap. Bad assumption. I pooped out after two miles, whereupon I had a one-way conversation (borrowed from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) with my fellow coach Emil Capitani: "How can he do that? I can't do that. Can you do that? How can he do that?"

I joined Leon the next day, and the next, and the day after that, and . . . before long, I was hooked.

Now, I could go on and on about the changes that running has effected in my life since that time. (Yes, running has taken me from Big Sur on the Left Coast to the rocky shores of Maine and from the lung-searing high country of Colorado to the Florida flats. Yes, it has put me on the same path as many others, and the indelible memories of the times we've shared on the run are precious to me. Yes, it has changed my diet, my daily routine, and my feelings about getting older.) But the most far-reaching change that becoming a runner brought about was that it gave me a new perspective. I didn't miss baseball, basketball, and tennis anymore. I didn't need the plaudits of the crowd. The withdrawal symptoms from my playing days were gone, elbowed out by joy born of fresh air, sunshine, and intensity of motion.

I have never taken that wonderful gift for granted. Regardless of the circumstance, I have never lost sight of the fact that the essence of running is joy. Hurting or not, fast or slow, alone or with a partner, I savor each run.

Herewith the refrain of my soul, adapted from "Mr. Tanner," a song by peerless poet-minstrel Harry Chapin:

Running is my life;
It is not my livelihood.
And it makes me feel so happy,
And it makes me feel so good.

And I run from my heart,
And I run from my soul.
I do not know how well I run;
It just makes me whole.


Bernie Greene is in his 34th year of joyful running.