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Why I Run - Why I Run - Bill Ludlow

Why I Run - Bill Ludlow
Club: Phoenix, Montreal

I started out as a child.

Growing up in blue collar Verdun meant playing sports or getting beat up by guys who play sports so the choice was pretty easy. Now came the hard part, all of my friends played sports on high level Inter-city teams so it was tough trying to keep up.

I started playing Soccer which I sucked at, then played Baseball, worse, then over to Football, where I was always open but kept dropping the fricking in ball. I start lifting weights in my early teens and got pretty big so I started playing Hockey but my friends who had been skating since the womb were going around me in circles. So since I had built up these muscles from lifting weights I became a Hockey goon. I was fairly tall for my age and I had these huge shoulder pads so I looked like a wall. I couldn’t skate worth a crap and I really wasn’t much of a fighter but I sure looked the part. At around the same time I was bowling and playing golf with friends who were, you guessed it, scratch golfers and 200+ average bowlers! Give me a break! Is there nobody I can beat at anything! I stuck to the weights, Golf and Bowling till I met Raeann, my "sole" {get it?} mate and loving wife.

Raeann had started running and since I was always the 10th fastest kid in grade school {all fast kids again!} I took up running too. I continued to lift weights 5 days a week also but finally gave up when the Marathon bug bit me. I lost about 35lbs of muscle in 9 months that had taken me 20 years to build! My buddies all thought I had been sick and started calling me "stick man” When we meet up for Golf now it’s me calling them" lumpy "or "puff daddy” as they stumble down the fairways.

When I first started running, everything was always about performance and little about fun and the long term. 35 Marathons and a couple of hundred road races later I am finally seeing the "big picture”. It’s not all about speed and killer workouts. It’s fun to be able to run really quick but it can come at a very high price. I want to be able to walk without a limp when I’m 60. Why do I run: Because I can and it makes me feel good. I can spend time with the woman that I love doing the sport that makes us both feel like athletes. I run because I like traveling to new places and making new friends along the way. With sensible training and a realistic outlook we can keep active and healthy well into our golden years. We have a wonderful group here at Phoenix and I am proud to be able to call all of you my friends. That’s why I run.

Bill Ludlow