We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves, the more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom”
Sir Roger Bannister
Even for newbies on the blog it should be a well-known fact that running is an important part of my life (you can find my first post about running here). I‘m on an average of 4 runs a week, with a distance ranging between 10-19k, the standard being 11 or 12k. I‘m an all-weather runner. I love long Dreisam sessions in the sun where I most definitely will pull up my shirt and go crop top, see my wibbly-wobbly mozzarella ball of a belly bouncing up and down, get embarrassed, let the crop top flop, until it gets too hot so I scould myself for body-shaming myself and the top gets cropped again.
In winter, on the other hand, when the temperature drops towards or even below freezing, I wear nothing but running leggings and a T-shirt (yes, you sissies, no long-sleeve) and gloves (because no matter what, my fingers will go numb. That’s the only part of my body that seems to be affected by the cold and behaves as it befits a lady). Sometimes, I get lucky and it starts snowing while I’m out there and the snowflakes dance around me while I run and it all becomes an early morning whirlwind of snow. Magical. I love to feel the coldness on my arms, I love to see my breath and I love the fresh and cold air and I love to come back home and enjoy the hottest shower ever, lobster style, and boil myself back to room temperature till my skin’s all red and my bathroom a hot and steamy Turkish bath.
And then there‘s rain.
– Haruki Murakami, Gefährliche Geliebte
It costs quite an effort to get motivated when its already pouring. I usually find myself procrastinating, fiddling around, checking Instagram, there might be something new, you know? So I unnecessarily delay what I will eventually do anyway: go out and go for that run. I guess it would be much more convenient if I wore rain gear. But I don’t. Don’t like them. They’re itchy and no matter how active and permeable they pretend to be, they are not and make me sweat in the stinky way. They increase my body temperature and I am already someone who’s never cold but always hot so hard pass. Ergo it is the same range of clothing as for every other run (although for heavy rain I wear my old pair of running shoes in order to not ruin my shiny new ones yet. Only reason I still hold on to them. Soon, they’ll be dumped for good and the now shiny and new ones will become the old ones and replaced by shinier and newer ones. It’s the circle of a runner’s footwear life. Nants ingonyama ♪♫). Dressed and ready and having picked the right playlist, the moment of stepping outside gets delayed further more by another safety pee, just in case, another insta check, just in case, and then I’m out of excuses, I leave the flat, jog down the stairs, leave the house and the shelter of our roofed patio and step into this inconvenient, wet world. I’m like 90% sure Susannah Clarke saw me on one of these occasions when she wrote
She wore a gown the colour of storms, shadows and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
With that mood settled, I run off and it’s ew for 2 minutes and then I don’t mind anymore. Oh, isn’t it the sweetest pain in the world, when it rains these hard, aggressive, needle-point like raindrops that prickle your skin and you suddenly feel so, so alive? Especially when you’re indeed nothing but broken promises and regrets. It will lift your spirits. Also, people can’t see your tears if you go for a cry run, which I do a lot. Echt. (Which reminds me of another of those distracting side stories you’re all probably very annoyed with but they give you sneak peaks into my past or present life, so yay, and hey, you may always just skip the parenthesis, that’s what they’re here for after all: I use to have a huge crush on Kim Frank. And one day, he went back from blonde dye to his natural hair colour because he didn’t want his fans to like him just for how cute he looked as a blonde. Well, turns out I did so this was the end of my Echt-fan phase. Yes, I’m that shallow. (guess I wasn’t a real fan, cause real = echt, for non-German speakers (woah, lots of bracketswithinbrackets. Inceptional! And I‘m gonna close them all now, adding an old-fashioned smiley to add yet another closing bracket and you managed to read through all of this, you have probably forgotten where we were so maybe we continue with our main plot, shouldn’t we? Ready? Here we go: :)))))
We have been out running for a while now. We are thoroughly soaked, our shoes squeak from the water we’re treading (I call it the Kneipp-effect of rain-runs). We come back home feeling alive and refreshed.
Spoiler: it‘s both.
And if we’re lucky, we get to stay inside, make a Chai Latte in our favourite mug to hug and warm up with, and watch the rain pelt against the windows, as if it tried to get in and aggressively so because it knows it isn’t welcome and we can feel saved and sheltered from the demons within and without and protected from and by the pale curtain of rain estranging us from the world and vice versa.