“I tell our runners to divide the race into thirds. Run the first part with your head, the middle part with your personality, and the last part with your heart.”
— Mike Fanelli
It’s that time of year again where the weather is nice and people are putting on their running shoes to celebrate National Running Day. It seems sort of weird to be talking about running on a blog that is mostly about art but there is a connection, trust me.
I first started taking my running seriously when I moved to NYC and was introduced to the expensive and crowded gym scene. Yikes! I needed a way to unwind after stressful days of being an unpaid intern and having no idea what direction my life was going. Luckily I had a pair of running shoes. Along these jaunts up and down the East River and through Central Park, I had a lot of time to think. It was on the road that I decided I was tired of where I was going and I was ready to take control of my own future.
Since then running has given me so many artistic inspirations, such as the plants I see in Randall’s Island Park or the way the light hits the city skyline at sunset. It’s easy to think that the best way to grow as an artist is to just hunker down in your studio day and night, but that’s not true. You need experiences, and running gives me those experiences on speed, not to mention the energy to create day in and day out.
In the last year alone, I’ve run 4 half marathons and a full, having never run more than 4 miles before I started training. That training taught me something invaluable about the journey of life. We are all in training in some way, but it’s not the training that will ultimately lead to success. It’s determination, gumption, strength of spirit and being stubborn in all the right ways. That’s what gets you across the finish line.