Julia's Gone Running - Day 18 Y2

Truthful Expression...

'It's like the March of the penguins', I said to Anadi as we were finding out way to collect race numbers last night...
Crowds of people wandering along the street clutching blue bags, with the name of the race sponsor on the side...
We went in the back entrance by mistake, which confused the man who was clicking on his clicker, the numbers of people leaving...
Our lack of Spanish, and his lack of English, meant that in the end he let us through, and it was only when we had entered the building that we worked out what had happened...!

Then the nice lady on the desk let us get our numbers without any identification, other than me typing my name into her system...
It is a big event here in San Sebastián... A Marathon, a 15k and a 10k, and I have to confess to huge relief at not having to run a marathon....!

Or even a 15k, although that is a distance I don't mind, in fact in the past I would say ten miles (16k) was probably my favourite distance.... Far enough to not be flat out, short enough to not start to feel 'oh my goodness, this is a long way!'

I remember one 'phase' many years ago, when I was running high mileage in preparation for a marathon.. I was running 100 miles each week with a ten mile race at the end for three weeks in a row... I recorded a time of 59 minutes ( and some seconds) for the race, at the end of week one, 58 something at the end of week two, and 57 something the end of week three!
This seems quite astounding to me now ! :)

And another ten mile running memory... I was 19 years old and had run a disappointing national X country championships, and Nigel who was my boyfriend (later to be husband) suggested I come and run the Bath hilly (very very!!) ten mile race as 'something completely different' ...
I was warming up and there was a Kath Binns! She was a friend of mine who had just won the national X country championships, and although she lived in the North of England, it turned out she too had a boyfriend in the Bath area...

That day she won the race in 57 minutes and I was second in 58 minutes (both times plus some seconds!) and we remain the only two women to have ever broken 60 minutes on this very tough course...

And little did I know then that nearly forty years later I would still be running races!
I used to envy actors and musicians who I felt would not only be able to keep doing their art all their life, but perfecting it, improving, going deeper into it, whereas I perceived my art had a life span...
How wrong I was....
I feel my art now has a greater depth to it, is fuller, and more expressive... It is more peaceful and communicates me at my most truthful, rather than me with tension in my being...
I have learnt that trying to run as fast as I can has nothing whatsoever to do with time as we know it in this paradigm of time over distance...
That is a chimera and a myth...
Using the time over distance measure is simply a medium to access another pathway and to discover, to investigate, to explore endurance in all it's different facets...

I was watching a documentary about the Greek ultra runner Yiannis Kouros last week, and he said that to endure means to withstand...
He was talking about it in reference to races lasting 24 hours and even up to six days long...

I looked up both words...

For Endure, the Collins dictionary said this, 'to undergo (hardship, strain, privation, etc) without yielding...'
And for 'Withstand' it said this, 'if something or someone withstands a force or action, they survive it or do not give in to it...'

Both words seem to emphasise something hard and difficult, which I suppose running along, on the edge of what you can manage whether that is over 400 metres or 400 miles would seem an apt description!
However as I have journeyed along this running path, increasingly my own definition is more about seeking and investigating, discovering, uncovering...
If we truly let go, released the neurosis that so often drives supreme achievements, I am certain that what would emerge, whatever it was, would be very beautiful indeed as it would be from our soul which never dies, and endures in the most positive way there is, through our truthful expression of pure love....