Jogging Into Joining

A Sport for Shy People, Too

“Introverts of the world, unite! Separately. In our own homes.”

This funny phrase resurfaced from memory during a recent run. The mind wanders when a body’s under prolonged pressure, seeming to distract itself from the strain of those countless strides over path and pavement.

Moving from sofa to street, from reclining to running, is its own special kind of stress. That jarring transition tends to be quite a shock to the system, but then soon it feels like a grudging acceptance is running alongside me. The corpus relinquishes resistance, starts to cope.  

This usually happens between my first and second mile. Ok, so we’re really doing this, the body and brain say. I imagine this is what’s meant by getting one’s second wind.

I think it’s around this distance too that runners begin to daydream. I was several miles into the mix when that introvert meme bubbled up from my brain. I wasn’t in my own home of course, but out in public. Yet I was still separate, alone. Sharing space with other people, but not really among them.

It occurred to me that all our milage underfoot exists in this sort of median stretch of social experience. I do love jogging for its own sake (mostly after that first mile or so!). But this train of thought got me wondering if that semi-social feature of running was also part of its appeal for me.

And I realized too that the sport is an ideal way for introverted individuals to step out of their comfort zones—physically and communally. Here are my thoughts on the subject, all of which is advice that others should follow, but that I will not. I will faithfully persist in my pattern of running solo. Socializing is for everyone else, silly.

Just kidding! I do plan to personally undertake this work also.

But all you extroverts come close now (though not that close!). And I’ll let you in on the open secret of our strata of socialization. We wallflowers want to participate. Being the life of the party must be nice. Yet most introverts would thrill at becoming a person who merely comes a little more alive at the party. I feel on solid ground saying so.

If that private person in your life doesn’t take you up on an invitation, don’t take it personally. Instead, make a note to invite him to the next gathering, and the next. That persistent outreach is appreciated so much more than you imagine. And you never know: the tenth time could be the charm.

Speaking of unrequited invitations, there’s been a hyper-local runners’ group in my town for quite some time. I wrote about them a few years ago in fact, but never surrendered to their beckoning Facebook banter. What—me, join? Surely you jest. You, first. No, really, I will!

One of the sport’s great virtues is that it’s tough to corner a running person in conversation—they’re simply moving too fast. But kidding aside, running is a great gateway drug for those less-than gregarious ladies and gents among us.

We can cross country over into extrovert territory for a while, exercise and experience how the other half lives. Repeatedly running down this road, getting our reps in, might lead to some life-changing places.

You can easily join one of these running groups online, and the stakes are low. The potential awkwardness of social conventions and trying to make small talk are removed. I imagine that’s a big reason why these small groups and the sport itself are so welcoming—socializing finishes a distant second from the main event (the run).

You’re not signing up to room on vacation with these running mates, nor they with you.

Run out of things to say however, and you can just fall back on running. Like Wallflower William at the workplace party, you can literally run away from the situation. The difference here is that your vanishing act won’t appear antisocial (much). The kids might call this ghosting, but I call it running a quick mile.

Again I jest, but there’s a good deal of practical and positive truth here. Running does play the starring role in these groups, which invites us to be more comfortable among their small crowds. Shy Susan can dial up or down her degree of interaction to suit the moment and her mood.

When that pressure to participate is removed, she (we) might feel much more at ease chiming in on the chatter. A poignant paradox, but there you have it.

“If you spend a party reading in a corner,” wrote philosopher Agnes Callard, “you come to see, no matter how good the book, that you are not fooling anyone.”

Ouch. This quote also bubbles up from my brainpan sometimes. But in a party of runners, all are moving in unison against the clock. Striving together against atrophy. Pushing through some pain to escape, for a little while, a life prosaic. Forestalling perhaps, our frailty and finality. There is glory and poetry and fellowship in this. The impulse, the need to fool anyone falls away, evaporates like sweat off our skin.

Though if you’re in a particularly talky group of runners and want to dial back your dialogue, you can simply pretend to be more out of breath than you are. Half joking there. But remember, you’ll still be participating, because the primary activity is the run. There’s no such thing as a wallflower in a 5K.

I’ve heard people say they’re easily exhausted by long bouts of social interaction. Depleted. I can relate. But I also believe it’s possible (and preferable) to increase our endurance in that sport called socializing. I’ve experienced this, and know that I could up my game even further. How’s it going for you?  

And that other kind of exhaustion (cardio) is a very effective antidote to self-consciousness. The body and brain have more urgent matters to attend to. Heart and legs need to keep pumping, the system needs cooling down, etc…

Amidst all those urgent issues, why waste resources stressing out about social stuff? There’s a road or trail to navigate, too! In such a state, we’re simply too preoccupied with moving our feet to bother being on our toes.

Many folks are fond of lubricating their social game with alcohol; I am not one of them. What say we try a group run instead? So I’ll finish where we started, by repurposing that original rallying cry, re-written here with a running bent.

“Introverts of the world, unite! Together, more or less. Maybe too winded to talk.”