I'm not an athlete. I'm a ballplayer.
JOHN KRUK
John Kruk uttered this response to a woman who asked if he was an athlete. One look at Kruk's waistline would give you the answer. But that is the cool thing about baseball. You can be fat and still be a world class ballplayer. The same is true of golf with John Daly smoking cigarettes and sipping Diet Coke. The simple fact is that "athlete" is an abused term. The sad thing is that so many people want to be athletes. I consider this to be a ridiculous vanity.
The running boom of the 1970s fed into this vanity. No one was hitting the baseball diamond or the football field in middle age to recapture glory days or to fulfill unrealized fantasies. Road racing was something virtually anyone could get into, and they did. Nevermind that they were far slower than the actual winners. They could make the claim that they were "athletes." Naturally, they took this athlete thing way too seriously to the point that anything less than running for fitness didn't count. Everything got turned into a competition.
Now, not every outdoor activity suffers from this athletic mentality. For instance, surfers don't have this same competitive mindset. Most just enjoy being on the waves. There are surf competitions, but that requires judges and subjective measurements. Surfing is not racing, and it isn't a game. You can add other activities to this non-competitive world such as hiking, paddling a canoe, rock climbing, and on and on. These things are enjoyed for their own sake and not for the sake of finishing times and trophies.
Fitness walking falls between these competitive and non-competitive worlds. Many fitness walkers began as runners but discovered that walking for fitness was the better fit. The downside is that many of these walkers still retain that quantitative competitive mindset that I refer to as "failed runner syndrome." For instance, if you walk in a local 5K and hope to finish before they close the course, you suffer from FRS. If you wear running shoes for walking, you suffer from FRS.
The better mindset is to think of yourself as a daily hiker like John Muir or Henry David Thoreau. Those fellows hail from a time before the athletic mindset took over for so many people. Walking was about exercise but also about thinking and exploring. I am disappointed that this older and better mindset has been lost to FRS.
Walking should be an enjoyable outdoor activity like hiking, surfing, and canoeing not an athletic activity like running, ultrarunning, and the triathlon. This doesn't mean you shouldn't exercise and get in shape. But it does mean abandoning the training mindset of always preparing for some sort of competitive event.
You are either a runner or a fitness walker. There's no shame in running if you want to nurse your fantasy life of being an athlete. Fitness walkers need to learn to let this go. These are two different animals that share some similarities like a tiger and a zebra. But you would be a fool to think these two species coexist on the same plane. They don't.
I used to run, but it looked like jogging. I am not a failed runner because I had no business doing that nonsense. Like John Kruk, I am not an athlete. I am an old man who wants to keep moving in life.
I suggest channeling your inner Thoreau and turn your daily walk into a daily hike where you get in touch with God, His creation, and your own thoughts. This is much sweeter than the vanity of training for a marathon that you have no chance of winning. And wear some comfortable shoes.