Why I Run

by Ulla
(Spain)

I love to run.

I donīt know if I can call myself a "runner". I have never competed in a race and I donīt think I would be amongst the fastest ones if I did.

But fact is: I love to run.
People ask me: "Why? Why do you get so uneasy if a couple of days pass by and you did not have the chance to run?"

Running is my balance, my "my time", the hour I have during the day when I am alone with my body and my thoughts.

I spend a lot of hours every day working. In front of a PC, in meetings, at airports, in planes and cars that take me back and forth to more airports and planes and meetings... At the end of the day, running gives me the chance to feel that I am more than "just a brain". That I have legs and lungs and a heart that beats and pumps blood through my veins and makes me breath and sweat. That I can get physically tired, not only mentally. That I am healthy and alive!!!

But more than that, running gives me time and space. This is why I love to run in the evening. When everybody is gearing up for dinner and to go to sleep, I hit the empty streets. I can think about my day, evaluate if it has been a good day, if I have made the most out of it, what things I have done well and where I need to improve the way I am and behave.

Sometimes I wrap the day up by thinking what I need to do tomorrow: that e-mail I want to send out, that report, that phone call, that visit to my mother, because I have not seen her for a while, oh, yes and I need to buy milk... and tell my husband I love him, because I donīt do that often enough.

Other days I think about my life in the future: if I am happy, what will be in 2, 5, 10 years time, where I want to be then and what kind of person I would like to become. I think about what I would do if one of us lost our job or if we got sick. I think that I would like to have a child or two and be a good mother.

At the end of the run I have come to peace with myself and I feel good; I feel I have done something very positive for my body and my soul.

So I wish I will be able to run for many many years. I have discovered quite a few corners of the world running: London, Paris, I fell in love with Copenhagen, got lost in Milan, enjoyed Cambridge and its riverside, fought with the hills in the streets of Madrid, ran along a snowed seaside coast in Sweden and through the burning sun of August in Lisbon...

But there are oh so many places to discover still. As long as I have my running shoes with me I will just run and enjoy that I am alive.

This is why I run!