It’s Fan Friday again, and today I want to share with you another writer who is “super awesome.” I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “super awesome” before, but one of my coworkers repeated that phrase a dozen times this week and his enthusiasm for the term is contagious.
I think George Sheehan is super awesome.
George Sheehan was a writer. And a doctor. And an athlete.
It’s hard to separate all those aspects of his life. He was a runner who wrote books about running, about fitness, about sport.
Except he didn’t write about how to run. And he didn’t write about how to train for races.
He wrote about how to run in order to live an amazing life. He wrote about how running is a spiritual journey that makes for an all around better life. As he writes:
“Fitness can be our formula, if not for greatness, at least for the self-knowledge necessary to live a full life. Which is the most all of us, great or small, can expect.”
“My fitness program was never a fitness program. It was a campaign, a revolution, a conversion. I was determined to find myself. And, in the process, found my body and the soul that went along with it.”
“For when I run, I am a hunter and the prey is my self, my own truth.”
I could spend hours sharing quotes from George Sheehan’s books. I have underlined half of his books, they have that much super awesome in them.
There are 3 primary books I recommend by George Sheehan:
Running & Being – in my opinion, his all around most profound writing – if you want only 1 book, get this one
Going the Distance – a collection of essays he wrote as he fought cancer for 7 years, before passing away in 1993 at the age of 74
Personal Best – this has a bit more psychology and some more specific writing about the actual sport of running
I am a fan of George Sheehan because he fundamentally understood – and wrote about – the connection between fitness and life. He knew that living a great life cannot be separated from physical excellence.
Running – and other sports – can be the path and the journey to excellence, to insight, to discovery, and to joy.
And reading George Sheehan is another path to joy.
I hope you discover joy today, whether it comes from running, or from another sport, or from reading someone who is super awesome.
