Running to me is freedom. It makes everything fall into the right place, it puts me into a state of mind where everything seems possible. Actually, anything IS possible, that I know by now. I was not really a fat or obese child, but I have always been the person in school who finished the lap on the running track last, I was the person nobody wanted on their volleyball team and during the years in school I had to take quite a lot of spite and malice for being not so slender, athletic or sporty. I was only in third grade, when my teacher told me that I am simply not a sporty person and that I just had to go with it: „Some are sporty, others are not, so you won’t get better than a C anyway.“ Sometimes I would really like to talk to that teacher, Mrs. Schneider, who ironically wrote into my Schoolfriends-Book that the thing she wishes to accomplish in life is finishing a marathon, and tell her that by now I have done so already. Twice.
So what has changed?
I take comfort in the idea, that it was the lapse of competition in the lonely and snowy areas of northeastern Finland (where I was happy to study a semester abroad) that eventually drove me to trying and trying again until I could finally do it, but it started earlier, with many laps of Nordic Walking together with my mom and sister. What took me so long? Believing, I guess. I simply did not think I could do it. And that is where the Finnish snow sets in. I was very sad at that time (sometimes, I still am today), but nevertheless it was maybe the first time in my life when I had the feeling, that it is totally okay to be the way I am, including every flaw and sadness, and that I have every right to be exactly that way. That I do not owe anyone anything. “You owe yourself,” to say it the Rocky-way. Running in the Finnish snow (more precise: jogging. Veeery slow.) was cold and pretty hard – try running in 40 cm high fresh snow once, you’ll see then! But getting out there had nothing to do with proving anything, with losing weight, with getting sporty or beating the clock. I got there for only one reason: Because I wanted to.
As a child (and still nowadays), I could easily be on my own and even long after stepping into highschool, I still enjoyed strolling through the woods behind my parents’ house, trying to shoot rabbits by bow and arrows or frying eggs over open fire in the garden. I always liked the idea of being a part of nature, melting into environment, doing something perfectly natural in a full circle of life. I felt like kind of fulfilling my nature, and I had this feeling then as I still have it now, out in the woods on a run. It was this feeling that I caught again out there in the snow – it just felt right. I could go as fast or slow as I wanted, no teachers, classmates or kilograms to haunt me – everything fell into its place. This feeling is the greatest freedom I know.
Don’t get me wrong, I am far from a state of meditative Zen, where I do not care about pace or distance at all. But these are always competitions with myself, and to me, they are gifts rather than burdens: When I was about twenty years old, I would have never believed any person who had told me, that one day I would be able to finish a 5K run. Thus, I was the proudest girl on earth when I did. And again, when they grew to 10K. 10K in less than 70 minutes. 10K in less than an hour. The 15-kilometres-bridge-to-bridge-lap. My first half-marathon. A much harder (and steeper!) one after a bad break-up and weeks of very little sleep. And finally, marathon. But these are my races, not anybody else’s.
To not be misunderstood: Running is not always easy. At all. It does not even always feel good. There are freaking hard runs, some hurt and some just won’t end. But start and finish line never look the same. I never feel the same after a run than I did before. By running, I move, I evolve. And this is a circle, because what motivates me, what moves me, is nothing and no one but myself.
So what has changed?
I take comfort in the idea, that it was the lapse of competition in the lonely and snowy areas of northeastern Finland (where I was happy to study a semester abroad) that eventually drove me to trying and trying again until I could finally do it, but it started earlier, with many laps of Nordic Walking together with my mom and sister. What took me so long? Believing, I guess. I simply did not think I could do it. And that is where the Finnish snow sets in. I was very sad at that time (sometimes, I still am today), but nevertheless it was maybe the first time in my life when I had the feeling, that it is totally okay to be the way I am, including every flaw and sadness, and that I have every right to be exactly that way. That I do not owe anyone anything. “You owe yourself,” to say it the Rocky-way. Running in the Finnish snow (more precise: jogging. Veeery slow.) was cold and pretty hard – try running in 40 cm high fresh snow once, you’ll see then! But getting out there had nothing to do with proving anything, with losing weight, with getting sporty or beating the clock. I got there for only one reason: Because I wanted to.
As a child (and still nowadays), I could easily be on my own and even long after stepping into highschool, I still enjoyed strolling through the woods behind my parents’ house, trying to shoot rabbits by bow and arrows or frying eggs over open fire in the garden. I always liked the idea of being a part of nature, melting into environment, doing something perfectly natural in a full circle of life. I felt like kind of fulfilling my nature, and I had this feeling then as I still have it now, out in the woods on a run. It was this feeling that I caught again out there in the snow – it just felt right. I could go as fast or slow as I wanted, no teachers, classmates or kilograms to haunt me – everything fell into its place. This feeling is the greatest freedom I know.
Don’t get me wrong, I am far from a state of meditative Zen, where I do not care about pace or distance at all. But these are always competitions with myself, and to me, they are gifts rather than burdens: When I was about twenty years old, I would have never believed any person who had told me, that one day I would be able to finish a 5K run. Thus, I was the proudest girl on earth when I did. And again, when they grew to 10K. 10K in less than 70 minutes. 10K in less than an hour. The 15-kilometres-bridge-to-bridge-lap. My first half-marathon. A much harder (and steeper!) one after a bad break-up and weeks of very little sleep. And finally, marathon. But these are my races, not anybody else’s.
To not be misunderstood: Running is not always easy. At all. It does not even always feel good. There are freaking hard runs, some hurt and some just won’t end. But start and finish line never look the same. I never feel the same after a run than I did before. By running, I move, I evolve. And this is a circle, because what motivates me, what moves me, is nothing and no one but myself.
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