'Running Is What Brings Me Joy...'
Last night Nikos, Dean and Yannis returned for part two of our interview. There was more that Nikos wished to share, about his vision for the Metsovo race and also to tell me about a race that changed him deeply in 2010, a ten day race in Nepal, covered 3000 kilometres and at times reaching 6000 meters altitude…
He talked about how the things he had known and believed to be the true meaning of life, he experienced in Nepal…
Yannis turned to me…‘He is a running philosopher’,… ‘Running is what brings me joy’ Nikos said…
I comment that I noticed that from his place of joy, and of doing what he loves to do, he has made such a difference to so many…
Nikos demonstrates though his stories, and his ideas that doing what we love to do makes a true difference to the lives of others. He told me that he feels gratitude for the gift of life, and he feels a responsibility not to waste it…. ‘Humans animals and plants, we are all energy and we must all move…’
He is universally loved in the Metsovo, and in the running community all over Greece. He coaches a group of athletes, as well as still running to a high level himself… ‘He is our pride’ Yannis said; he has inspired and influenced so many people beyond Metsovo, changing the face of mountain running in Greece with his talent for running so well…
Nikos has brought his experiences back from international events all around the world, to create the top quality Metsovo trail race, now having completed its third successful year…
His intention is to lead the way with his race, which is being made possible by a big team of helpers and volunteers….
Anadi and I are still here, in Metsovo, for one more day…
I have already become accustomed to my day now starting with a steep climb for over a mile… Today Anadi came with me up to the grassy slope and then I had an urge to run, I am feeling quite well recovered from the weekend…
There was a winding path which took a less vertical route to the top, and so I ran this way… It wound through the trees for about 500 meters before turning left to join the steep pathway, familiar to us now as the last mile of the race….
I jogged back down the path, having decided to run up it three times…!
Anadi chose to walk and carried on walking to the top of the hill, where I found him after my third run, sitting quietly on the side of the path in the sunlight…
Doing what we love to do… knowing what that is, appreciating the gift of life to do these things, to be on this planet in a body and experience living through the senses… I was aware of all this as I ran on the side of the mountain today.
If we fully appreciate the physical life this can then can open and unlock our inner world… If we truly listen and connect to our body, and the wisdom within it, we can have a free and easy life, rather than staying stuck in our minds insistence to adhere to old patterns and stories…
And Nikos is a living example of someone who from the very beginning followed the path he knew was his… It has opened and opened and is ever expanding.
This is how life can be, like a spiral staircase, getting higher and wider and expanding for us to express ourselves in bigger and brighter ways with the passing years…
But if we have wounds and unresolved hurts, it follows that as the staircase widens and goes higher, then the hurts can affect us in more obvious ways, shouting insistently for us to take notice…
Sometimes it takes a big ‘bang’ or ‘Life event’ for us to take notice, which is why it is preferable that we take notice minute by minute of the messages of our body and our heart, because they will tell us all we need to know…
Later…
I am the delighted and proud owner of some new trail shoes… I am very much looking forward to running on the mountain paths in them tomorrow morning!
We met Apostolis on Sunday, it was he who expressed horror at me racing on the trails in my Nike frees… Today he emphasized this again and we had a very enjoyable time in his shop talking about his love of running in the mountains, not racing… 'I support others to run races...'
He loves to run on the mountains trails early every day between 6am and 7.30am…
He told us too of his days when he competed to a high level Alpine ski-ing… He was ranked third in Greece.
His eyes were bright as he was telling us of his love of the mountains both in the winter snow, ski-ing along a track that is the same one we ran on… And running in summer…
‘There are so many trails and paths to follow…’
