“Alone, in the clear air and searching sunlight, we are afoot with the quiet gods, and men can know each other and themselves for what they are.”
MUMMERY, 1894

Knowing yourself for what you are ….

It’s a warm, almost balmy evening - I’m sitting in a café in a church square of Mainz (Germany). A long way from the winter snows …. It was a long winter this year - maybe too long?

‘Sometimes running is a joy, and sometimes it feels hard.’ Do your own words ever come back to haunt you?

Today for me was confirmation that I’ve lost (I hope only for the moment) the magic that was in my legs? A flat half marathon on the road - in a time that, for me, was very slow. My legs seem to have forgotten how to run fast, my head seems to have forgotten how to push myself, and my heart seems to have forgotten how to will the head and the legs to play the game. But it’s early days. The long winter of ski alpinism races and running mainly on the snow happened more by situation perhaps than by design. But as it worked out I couldn’t help feeling that a break from road training would be a good thing in the hope of being strong and injury free for the summer. That was the ‘theory’, but it’s the practice I’m left with now ….

How to coax the heart and soul to convince the head and the legs to play the game? Just for a while longer, just so I can see how far I can go. Just to feel that magic again. Race or no race, there is no victory, no reward except the joy you are living while you are ‘dancing your run’1. Just to dance again …

1 Fred Rohe in ‘The Zen of Running’