Medal without racing

After testing my A.D. running abilities yesterday, this morning (after a night full of crying, feeding, cuddling and crying again) I left my bed at 6.30 am. I had to go running again…
I haven’t been downtown with my running shoes since last December and somehow, intuitively, that was where I wanted to go. One of the reason was the Singelloop, a 6.6km annual run around the historical city centre – my first race last year, my first running race ever! Last night I missed it so I wanted to check if there were still any remains of it today.

To my surprise, I haven’t found anything that would even remotely remind of a running race with 5000 runners along the city centre canals. All was clean and quiet. I guess the cleaning guys had a loooong night.

I did not want to go further than 2 km down the main canal but then I suddenly remembered there was this one cemetary that I always wanted to visit but never had the time or opportunity. Funny enough, the gate was open this morning:

Half an hour later my 5.5 km loop was done and I was back at our city gate. What a beautiful morning!

And there is a bonus to it too – so that I always remember why it pays to get up early: at the end of my run, I picked up the Singelloop medal from the cobble stones. So here I am – no race but still one shiny medal!

My Road

After several months of running, I realised that not all the roads are the same. The regular reader knows that around us, the landscape is as flat as a pancake and the wind usually blows from south-west. In other words, the speed on each road is pretty predictable, depending only on the direction I pick to leave the house.

But there are exceptions. Like this old narrow Road about 2 km away from our house. It is a stretch of asphalt about 1 mile long that used to connect two tiny villages. Nowadays it is only used for local traffic (tractors) and as a cycling path. For some reason, every time I hit this particular road, I run faster, easier, I feel no pain, just happiness as all the endorphins start coming to my head.

This morning I couldn’t sleep. I went to the bathroom and instead of returning to my warm bed, something made me to dress up and leave the house. Even though last night I came  home from  my rainy run all soaked and tired, I had to run again. I ran to my Road. The sun was barely up and I was all alone. The feeling was the one of unlimited freedom.

I did not want to be in any other place, any other time. Just here, me and the Road, the two of us. I had no plans, no time schedule, just my empty head watching the world waking up into yet another bright day.