Being Still While Moving Forward...
Today I have journeyed and and discovered that one of the core reasons I love to run, is that I love to journey.
In the past I often liked the travelling to a destination better than when I actually got there, travelling slowly through France and Switzerland was my idea of a perfect life...
Stopping to run races in villages and up mountains on the way showed me how I truly wanted to live...
It has only taken thirty years to fully commit to it as my lifestyle. :)
Today I set off early at 7am to drive to Eastbourne as I was meeting my friend Jane in the Grand Hotel to be together in my capacity as healer and therapist, to help her hurting heart following the illness and death of her Dear Dad, and to support her in the process of all that is unfolding now as she and family and friends grieve the loss of their beloved Peter...
The M25 was chocca and it became evident after an hour or so that the ETA of 10am was slipping miles away...
It was during this journey, on a crisp winter day, that turned sunny, and frosty fields melted into bright green, sun streaming through auburn leaves; sky streaked with white flossy clouds and a translucent beauty all around me...It was during this not moving very fast journey, that I recognised that the qualities I love about running I was experiencing now, even though I was not running a step.
Beautiful landscape, journeying without real worry about arriving, solitude and time to reflect.
I also like journeying with a companion in the same way I like running one on one. Connecting and exploring and being together in the running step, side by side, or on a train, a plane or in a car...
Of course while running there is the body experience of breathing deeply and feeling the lungs and heart open and the muscles flex...
But the intrinsic journeying is what I recognise it is truly about for me.
Still within this movement.
Being still...
While moving forward.
No real attachment to the destination...
Today this was what happened...
In realising I wouldn't make Eastbourne for ages, I made a contingency plan...
'How about meeting at Buxted Park' I said to Jane...
It was about the same journey for her as going to Eastbourne, and nearer for me by about forty minutes and I was seeing another client at 2pm only fifteen minutes drive from Buxted Park.
I reckoned I could make it by 10.30....
One of the major differences about driving down the M25 on a long long journey, to going for a long run is the ability to stop whenever I want for a wee....
I was getting more and more in need....
And then I discovered that I was still twenty two miles form the services, going by this time at about twenty miles an hour....
It would not be possible to wait that long! - and so the hard shoulder it had to be...!
This is also one of the hazards of being a very keen water drinker... Drummed into me as a child by my Dad 'hydrate hydrate always hydrate' accompanied by horror stories of people dying from de-hydration in the desert...!
That coupled with the emphasis on the need to hydrate as an athlete, this means I am often bursting to go to the loo on long journeys...
The journey opened up and whizzing along happened, I had called Anadi whilst stationary and he looked on traffic reports that told him cars were stationary on the M25 between the junctions I was driving on...!
I sped along and reflected that I was now once more taking a trip down memory lane...
It was in 1988, driving along this motorway just as it sweeps down towards junction 7 with Sussex spread out in front of me, that I knew that I wanted to live in Sussex...
We were driving to Buxted Park for an interview to set up the leisure facility in the new hotel, which had been previously owned by an Arab sheik for twelve years...
Once I was whizzing I came off onto the A264 and thought I could cut across through Turners Hill to Buxted Park; I used to drive that route a lot twenty years ago...
But I got lost.
Amy my wonderful PA called me at this point to check whether I wanted a whole box of shot bloks (running fuel) to travel away with next week...
We calculated that the added weight was worth shedding something else for, so that I was sure of running energy...!
'I'm so lost' I said...
'It's very beautiful, I'm going down a country road and the scenery and the trees are beautiful, but I am lost'
I was at Chelwood gate and I knew this was somewhere near where I wanted to be...
Amy said, 'perhaps you will get an 'Aha moment' coming from the lost ness...'
At that moment I emerged onto Nutly road by the Indian restaurant.
'Aha !!!
I know where I am...'
The moment had come.
It is aways worth relaxing when lost, in the car, when running, or in life, the Aha moment will to come in time, often when you are not looking for it...
Or I could of course travel with a map! Or sat nav...!
I arrived at the hotel I knew so well, such a part of my history, and I looked around at the beautiful scenery and walked up the steps to reception
Clive was there ...
He had been one of the original crew !
'Julia' he said as I walked through the door... As if it were only yesterday ...
We exchanged news and talked together, and after a few minutes he said to me...
'Are you still running...'
'Yes I'm still running ...'I replied