I ran today. No wait, I’ll start again, this beginning is not good.
Also
I ran today.
There, that’s a little better. Maybe the difference is really a small thing, but I can see it, and I think it is important. As with all the other things we are used to doing, breakfast, work, school, when the sentence starts with also, it almost seems as if that activity is part of our daily routine and completing it is like going to cross off the shopping list something you just bought. Effectively for me, running is part of the things I want to do every day, one of the items on my day’s list. And so, I ran again today, I was saying, and I ran
outdoors
, around the pond that’s a few miles from home, on one of my standard runs.
With each step, in this October air that still smells a little like summer, but if you get out of the sunny areas a little bit it is already as cold as winter, I tried to detach my head a little and not think. There is not much to think about, really, when running. Energies must remain focused on the physical effort being performed, and the brain, therefore, tends to focus on one or two other thoughts at most. If you start thinking about something, however, you can run over and over that thought with all the attention you have until you finish running.
Many times, this mechanism of hyperconcentration and isolation from the rest of the world is useful and helps you find a solution for something that was bothering you, but on my run today I didn’t feel like looking for solutions, I just wanted to run and enjoy the scenery. I set a workout on the watch and set off, paying attention only to where I put my feet. And because I didn’t want to think about anything, I ended up thinking about a lot of things, getting carried away in my thoughts by the things I encountered on the way.
I thought about the road that goes up to the countryside, whose name I don’t know exactly despite having driven it hundreds of times in my life, the house that overlooks the sea and dominates the small valley where in May the barley is tall and golden and ready to mow, the tight curves where I have to be careful because the pedestrian part narrows and cars are not always careful (I know it’s not the cars themselves that need to be careful, but come on, you get me), and I thought about how good it feels to run. Or to how bad it is when fatigue sets in and the race doesn’t go as hoped. But in either case, running is always good, because it means that we have found a way to carve out our time, to do something for us and to want (even when running is bad) some good.
I don’t know how things will turn out in the coming days and weeks, I don’t have a magic sphere and like everyone a little bit of fear for what is happening in the world la ho, I know that unfortunately it is not you and I who can provide a solution, but also that our small role we can play. Trying to stay as positive and relaxed as possible, perhaps with the RunLovers podcast (which is a serious thing and that is precisely why we laugh a lot), forgetting the controversies we read everywhere about anything now, or trying to change something in our training habits To improve ourselves a little bit, which is something that can always be done.
As I was running I thought that I would like to do all these things, and when I got home, despite being tired, I already felt like running again. Because if I turn“also” into “
still
” and if from beginning I put it at the end of the sentence, the meaning changes but only slightly, and if it changes, it changes for the better.
Today I ran, again.
And I wish I could run again and again and again. As long as it is possible for me to do so.