Yet she has a point.
Rain, wind, cold and snow. Or sun, scorching heat and mugginess. Impossible rises on the only days off, little lunch breaks, leaving work after hellish days. To go sweat it out or brave the coldest temperatures. In any case, to go and make an effort. And without any doctor prescribing it for us.
At first glance and so point-blank, there would actually seem to be no valid justification for trying to explain even a cursory explanation of this form of (in)conscious madness.
I still remember my beginnings. I started running more or less seriously when I was just over five years old. I wanted to one day be able to say ‘yes, it is true, I am lazy, but I once ran a half marathon with my own legs’. What should have been my ultimate goal became my starting point instead. Day after day, I realised that, contrary to most people’s thinking, struggling is good. Often while running you feel like you have to spit your soul out, but then after the initial fatigue you feel invincible like a lion. It’s kind of the opposite of a hangover: while you’re drinking you’re euphoric and feel like a lion, the next morning…whatever, you get the picture!
However, even a very small level of preparation is enough to limit that feeling of fatigue that can assail you when you’re running. And at that point you always feel like a lion and it becomes a drug. A healthy drug. The more you run, the more you want to run. You start to lose weight, you get fit, you feel good about yourself and others. In a word, you rejuvenate.
And then the environment, the company. I could give a million concrete examples, but I will limit myself to a couple.
– San Vittore Olona (MI), 31 January 2016. I have to run the 84th edition of the Cinque Mulini, perhaps the most historic and important cross-country race in the world. While I am warming up trying to relieve the tension for such an important appointment, I am stopped by a boy who is also warming up: ‘Hi Lorenzo, how are you?’, as if between old friends. First time I see him. He follows me constantly on my blog. The power of running. And of Facebook!
– Gubbio (PG), 21 February 2016. Italian absolute cross-country running championships. Same dynamic. I’m warming up. It has been a very difficult week, one of the darkest of my life. I am in Umbria, far away from home and a bit of everything. Yet I meet guys from Milan, Treviso, Trieste, Udine, Ascoli Piceno and Palermo. Friends I met through racing. Comrades in fatigue whom I have not seen for a very long time. With everyone I stop to talk. In a few minutes we start laughing and joking as if we were at the Sunday non-competitive.
Suddenly, I can finally leave behind me the ugly ghosts of the week that has just ended.
The magic of running.
There are no rivals, only colleagues and friends to compare yourself with, who can give you precious and disinterested advice, to raise your bar a few centimetres each time. To mature as an athlete and as a person. And to have unforgettable experiences.
“But who makes us do it?” my friend asks me while we are at dinner on the evening of her birthday. We have known each other for just over a year, thanks to running. She has just set a personal best in the 10 km. She is devastated, but satisfied. As a gift, I, on the other hand, registered her for another race.
I could answer her by listing all the reasons given above, but time is short. A quick, summary answer is urgently needed, and as I hand her the envelope with the race entry, all I get out is
“But who DON’T make us do it?“
