Sports The Starting Line 51. A Movie I Want to See
|
Leslie Rubinkowski had never run a mile in her life when she watched runners passing through Oakland last May during the Pittsburgh Marathon and wondered: Could I do that? This blog will track the answer to that question. Over the next 19 weeks, she will seek advice from experts, explore issues that runners face - from nutrition to motivation to footwear to music - and write about all of it while running a minimum of 25 miles a week. Her account will culminate in the Pittsburgh Marathon on May 15. Related links:
|
RSS: 
About Leslie Rubinkowski: Now a writing teacher at the University of Pittsburgh and at Goucher College, she is a former reporter at the Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Press and has worked at other newspapers, including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, covering everything from government to finance to film. Her writing has appeared in magazines including Harper’s and literary journals like Creative Nonfiction. She is author of 
60 Days to Marathon
Monday and Tuesday: Off
The March issue of Guernica offers the story of a runner who is training to win on more than a personal level. Salah Ameidan is one of the indigenous people of the Western Sahara, the Sahwari. His homeland has been contested since before his birth. At 12 he was forced to join Morocco’s junior athletics team. In 2003, when he was 21 and representing Morocco in a race in France, he ended an 8-kilometer race by pulling out a Sahwari flag – outlawed in Morocco – and running the final 200 meters. Knowing he would arrested when he returned to Morocco, he stayed in France, where he now lives in exile – and still hopes to someday run in the Olympics, though for his own country. Filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky's upcoming documentary "The Runner" tells this story. And reading about Ameidan invites the question of why anyone really runs, and how that reason is perhaps the most potent fuel.
Some footage from the documentary is below, and the entire Guernica article appears here. What follows is the interview’s section about running – which, tellingly, isn’t about running at all.
Guernica: When you are training what is your routine like?
Salah Ameidan: I run two times a day. In a week I do about one hundred and thirty kilometers.* But my official training distance/mobility is fifteen hundred meters and three thousand meters with obstacles. I participate in popular marathons which happen on the road and across cities and whenever I can I display the Sahrawi flag or Sahrawi symbols to make a statement about the Sahrawi national independence movement.
Guernica: What do you feel when you’re running?
Salah Ameidan: Participating in the sport of running is the most peaceful way for me to relay the Sahrawi message, which is focused on the right to self-determination, to the world. I am no longer entirely consumed with winning or becoming a world champion. I run with more purpose than that.
Guernica: Do you feel free when you’re running?
Salah Ameidan: I love running. Before 2003, my aim was to become a champion. But after that point my mind has been consumed more and more with thoughts about my people and my homeland—what will happen to my mother and the rest of my family? They continue to be hassled and humiliated by the Moroccan occupation forces. Even when I’m training, my mind is not empty; it’s possessed with these issues.
Guernica: Do you dream of competing in the Olympics? What country would you run for?
Salah Ameidan: Yes, I do wish to participate in the Olympics games. But I don’t think that I would represent any other country than my own.
*About 81 miles
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|