3 Advantages to Being an Ugly Runner in a Town Full of Beautiful People

I’m one of those ugly runners. Perhaps you’ve seen us around. We’re out there, running through your neighborhoods, looking pretty ugly. Maybe we’ve even alarmed you at some point, made you think, “Oh my, that person does not look like they should be running. That person definitely does not want to be running, and so I am confused as to why they are doing it.”

Don’t worry. It’s okay. We’re fine. If we didn’t want to be running we would not be running. We enjoy running, we just don’t look great while it’s happening.

Some of us are flailers: we wobble at the knees and ankles. Our limbs are all over the place. We look like we’re forcing our bodies to do something it was not designed to do. Some of us are pitchers, hurling ourselves inelegantly forwards.

Some of us look like our bodies are being piloted by tiny aliens who have not yet mastered the controls. Some of us have at least one foot on the ground at all times, and can only be said to be running in the most generous sense of the word. Some of us turn red, sputtering and clanging like a malfunctioning steam engine.

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For some of us, the ugliness is in our faces—the contorted, anguished expression of a person struggling to pass a pinecone. For some, it’s our spindly legs and knobby knees. It’s our mangled feet, like piles of boiled carrots. It’s our misaligned and/or bleeding nipples. You get the idea.

I’m not sure what kind of ugly runner I am, though I know I must be one. I know this, because as I was running the other day, a younger and much fitter runner went zipping by me, and as she did she called out, “Great job! Looking good! Keep it up!” Yeah! I thought. Love that support. That’s how all runners should be when they pass each other on the street!

And then it occurred to me that I must have looked awful. She must have thought that I was dying, and needed the motivation. The thing was, I wasn’t dying. I felt great. I felt like I was killing it.

That’s when I knew: I was an ugly runner.

I live and work in a college town. According to the most recent census information, the town itself has a total population of about 21,000 people. But the university enrolls nearly 17,000 undergraduates, nearly doubling the population each fall.

The students are everywhere, and, like all young people, they are gorgeous. As a general rule, they keep themselves in great shape. Physically, they’re in the primes of their damn lives. So you see how this can pose a problem for the rest of us.

As an ugly runner, I’m the odd man out. The streets are packed with beautiful specimens of vigor who are not so much exercising as they are modeling athletic wear about town.

The young women slide from the pages of Athleta just as Kelly Le Brock was dot matrixed out of a nerd’s computer in Weird Science.

The men, on the other hand, are like eerie lab experiments in tiny shorts: hairless, sweatless, nipples like dimes. They run effortlessly. They are impervious to weather.

Their spectral bodies glide weightlessly along the sidewalk in long, fluid strides. Uphill, downhill—it doesn’t matter.

My body, on the other hand, is earth-bound. It’s twenty years older. It has that many more miles on the speedometer. It is lumpier and paunchier. It jiggles in places as I clomp along. It emits an array of embarrassing sounds. Often, it is stinky.

Such conditions would be demoralizing if I let them, but I don’t. Instead, I embrace my body—I love it! I would not trade it for any other because, as I see it, there are three distinct advantages to being an ugly runner in a town brimming with beautiful people.

1. It Ups My Game

I am generally the oldest runner on the road—not always, but often—and I tend to be the slowest. I’m certainly the least attractive. And this is quite a lucky break, because few things motivate me as effectively as undiluted insecurity.

I sometimes dream that I live in a different kind of town. In this town are people just like me: they all have doughy, droopy middle-aged bodies and they all chug along at a reasonable pace and they all look pretty terrible while they’re doing it. It is the most comfortable place that I can imagine, and it is the worst place in the world. I don’t want to be comfortable; I want to be uncomfortable. I need to feel insecure.

And boy do I.

Insecurity has been great for me. Insecurity narrows its eyes, tells me that I’m looking kind of old, that I’m getting kind of fat. Insecurity carries my shoes into the room and drops them just out of reach. Insecurity nudges me out the door and then trails behind me with its finger in my back, pushing me to go farther, to run faster.

Insecurity says Which couch would you be sprawled out on right now if it wasn’t for me? And I want to say the cuddly one with the soft cushiony pillows, but I don’t say that, because it’s all I can do to just keep breathing.

All that having been said…

2. It Keeps Me Disciplined

I am not a competitive person. It’s just not in my nature. But when I get lapped by a nineteen-year-old with a military-grade body, perfect form, and Prefontaine-levels of thick hair, my natural inclination is to hit the gas. My instincts say Go faster! My instincts say You’re losing!

It’s up to my mind to intervene and say, HEY. Everybody calm down, or there’ll be no Frosty later!

Feet, my mind says, maintain! Arms: Shake it out. Thighs: What’s the chafing situation? How’s the Bodyglide holding up? Everybody good? THEN SHUT UP AND KEEP RUNNING.

I will never surpass those young, fast runners. But it takes a certain kind of discipline to be the slowest runner out there. I must constantly remind myself to run at my own pace and not theirs, to do what’s best for my body. Every outing is an exercise in discipline, and I win by getting lapped. I win every time I lace up and go.

The beautiful thing about ugly runners is that we run in the first place. We put in our miles and we interact with our imperfect bodies and we love the way we feel and nothing else makes the slightest bit of difference.

3. It Grounds Me in Reality

I live in a town where 45 percent of the population is, and will always be, between 18 and 22 years old. They are perpetually in their prime. And in an unfair twist, I age one year annually as if I’ve been cursed by a witch. It’s a complete injustice! This is a reality that gets less and less pleasant to face the longer it goes on. I was twenty once, I want to tell the beautiful people. For a whole year, too.

Things have held together for me pretty well, considering, but nothing lasts forever. Cities fall, empires crumble. You get that mole removed because it could be something. You get screened for the thing that killed your grandfather. You can’t drink that second cup of coffee any more because it upsets your tummy. You give up gluten and some suger. You let them put the scope in you. Such is life.

These are things I’d rather ignore, to be honest. In fact, these are the things I could have ignored just five years ago, just three years ago. But not now. Now the body pronounces itself. Now the body says, You are not like them anymore, buddy. And because I am an ugly runner in a town full of beautiful people, and those people are like shining buoys that I’m always drifting further and further away from, I am able to look back at them, to shield my eyes from the sun, to squint and say, Yep. You’re right. Tell me what you need and let’s get it done. I am able to be the person that I am rather than wishing I was the person that I used to be. This is good. This has made me healthier in almost every respect.

It isn’t always pretty, but sometimes you have to get ugly in order to move forward.