Politics of Fitness

Today is Super Tuesday, a significant step towards choosing the next GOP candidate. It definitely makes you think about the state of the current economy and what the next four years can bring!

Despite what the crazy man in Starbucks thinks, politics are at the forefront of our lives now a days. I seriously sat next to a man who had a realllly long phone conversation about how “with Whitney Houston dying, nobody’s thinking about politics these days.” Not sure what world he lives in.

Anyway…

In the last ten years or so, since the United States slumped in to a “recession” the popularity of running, especially races, has skyrocketed. This past month, I read the book, Born To Run, and they actually highlighted what I had been noticing. Throughout the past century in the United States, as the economy has dropped, running has spiked. In the Great Depression, there was a run called the Great American Footrace, in which ultrarunners ran fourty miles a day across the country. The other spike in running occurred in the seventies when the country was also going through a tough time. It makes sense - it requires you to buy no equipment, and when the weather is nice, is a free way to relieve stress and feel great!

I think this is really interesting, because I took a history course for the first time last semester and these are the kind of trends that are pointed out about different time periods such as world war two and the Vietnam War. I kept thinking that the trends I was studying probably went unnoticed during the time. For example, we learned that the war environment of trying to eliminate the Japanese during World War Two led to an increase in trying to exterminate insects on the home front and a rise in enthusiasm for herbicides such as DDT.  

Sorry for getting side tracked, but I just remember thinking that the people living in that time probably did not consciously link the two, just as while we may notice the increase in friends running races, we may not see the historical connection to the current “recession”. 

One of my sisters, a few years ago, also told me that she had read that because the economy was in such a bad state, most people were having more creative dates like doing outdoor activities or cooking together. As a result, there were some statistics about how relationships started in this way were more successful in the long term.

Hopefully the next president (or Obama’s next term) can fix the recession, but I’m not complaining about Americans getting more active and healthy!

My sisters and me after they ran the 4 mile Gobble Gobble Turkey Trot 2010!