Are you in the R.A.T Race? – 2

When the Enron scandal broke out, most investigators were surprised that almost everyone in the Organization, irrespective of their ethical or moral drivers, had participated in the massive cover up for years together. It took a whistle blower to leak out that massive fudging of numbers were taking place. The only conclusion was because the environment at Enron celebrated  fudging of numbers.

Closer home, in international BPOs,  the environment celebrates smoking,  weekend bingeing and eating crappy food in the cafeteria.  Though individually everyone knows that this is not desirable, he or she participates because the environment celebrates such unhealthy behavior.

Let us now take a look at the historical perspective of recreational running. Until about a few decades back life was not so sedentary. The farmer attended to his fields, the carpenter did wood work and the house wife did all her grinding and cooking using their own motive power. They were in Zone2 / LSD training the whole day.  A small body of athletes who reveled in running fast went for track and field competitions and won small cash but mostly recognitions.

Life soon started becoming sedentary and health parameters started going out of whack, due to lack of exercise.  Recreational running naturally found favour for a lot of good reasons.  Recreational runners  soon started getting into running events and started meeting with athletic runners who spoke the language of pace and timings.   Racing event organizers were also geared towards speed since that was the sole criteria by which the participants could be ranked and judged.

Thus recreational runners started to speak in the language of athletic running.

The environment in which recreational runners found themselves celebrated speed and timing and the original drivers of good health such as BP, Lipid profile or Sugar were forgotten.

So the moot question is, “Should recreational runners revel in an environment that celebrates athletic running and join the R.A.T. race? “

More to follow