There is something about running. The combination of repeating a simple body movement and reaching a higher state of flow. The sky above, the ground below, getting on, letting go. It’s like recalibrating your brain.
I don’t like going to the gym for that matter. There are eyes everywhere and glimmering monitors, showing soap operas or news channels. The strange willingness to suffer, the enhanced drinks, the enhanced bodies that seem not merely attractive to me. Running happens on a strange machine, a hamster wheel for maniacs. The gym feels like the hotbed for bullshit.
Running, on the other hand, feels like re-taking your life. It’s about keeping a rhythm wherever you go. It’s about thinking straight and clear. The japanese writer Haruki Murakami wrote a wonderful little book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること), in which he contemplates about running long distances: «All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing.»
Running is a stripped-down metaphor for life. That in the end you are alone. Sky above, ground below, getting on, letting go.