OUR VIEW: Helping yourself while helping others

For many, running is just painful. With each foot strike draining energy and sending shock waves of displeasure through the body, and each breath like a thousand daggers stabbing the lungs.

For others, running is pleasurable, easy, even.

These are the people we hate to be on the treadmill next to. We’re all panting, dripping and swearing, while those runners are calm, peaceful – even a hint of a smile spreading across their faces. It just makes us hate them even more.

Whether you’re the first type of runner or the second type, it’s just nice to see people running around campus for different causes in the two 5K runs that happened over the weekend.

It would be even more ideal if conditions outside looked more like spring in Utah than spring in Antarctica, but now that it’s warming up students can get out and run around campus instead of being cooped up in apartments or the Fieldhouse. The exercise isn’t just good for fighting the freshman – or even the senior – 15. It also lowers stress levels during the inevitably stressful last few weeks of the semester. And we can all use something to get our blood flowing every once in a while.

And we could all use some sun. We could all use a tan and some vitamin B-12, right?

So we’d like to applaud the organizers of the weekend’s 5Ks for getting people out and on their feet, while providing a chance to do some good for others at the same time. Very rarely do we get to do good for ourselves and someone else simultaneously. It seems that all too often what we do for ourselves doesn’t go very far to help those around us.

But this case is different.

Who knows, besides the positive effects of the exercise and the warm fuzzies from helping others, some participants probably even had fun running. There aren’t a lot of us that can fully grasp how that’s possible, but it’s good to see people willing to get outside and run around for a good cause, and have a little fun with it as well.

Even if you were being selfish and just did it for the event T-shirt to show people you’re more in-shape than they are, that’s OK, too – at least you contributed your money and energy.