run long distances again

As mentioned earlier today, I absolutely had to go running. I ran fast and far, letting the wild cat in my body decide on the pace and my mind wander wherever it wanted.

Suddenly, I realised that had ran farther than ever before and didn’t know where I was. Luckily, the cat I was today has good instincts. And besides, the sun was shining so that it was easy to find the right heading. The rest was literally straightforward.

I don’t know how fast and how far I have run today. It was fast and quite far. I was exhausted as I returned home again, but neither my legs nor my knees hurt. That’s excellent news because it means I am in a shape that allows me to run as much as I want without fear. That has not always been like this.

The little word “again” in this goal is quite telling, isn’t it? It reveals that there is a story to tell about that subject. Here it is.

Running has always been my favourite discipline next to high jump. As a teenager I jumped higher than I was tall and run faster than the others at school on all distances longer than a few kilometers.

At the age of 19, I had an accident, rupture of muscles in both legs. What followed was a long way back to walking free of pain with several set backs. The worst of those was the sudden and stinging pain which occured from time to time in my left leg as soon as I tried to run more than a kilometer and left my leg half paralysed for a day.

That is all past times now. I am able to run an hour and more without any problems. Today I went running in the woods and it was a real pleasure. With some workout I will be able to run longer distances again. Even though I might never run five 100k runs in five consecutive years as my father did.