I was into running fast, in bursts. I played hockey and football, and that's what those sports are made of. Now fast in this direction, after the ball, into that space, chasing that player. Now slow, jogging, walking, standing. Now fast again. Ten metres, twenty metres, five metres, thirty metres: short distances. In the sports I played, this running was about noticing the outside: anticipating what will happen next, sensing people and space and how they are moving together, judging where you need to move next. And it was about changing and adapting: your team is attacking and you need to leg it, full gas up the wing to get there in time, and then switch, suddenly cutting in sideways, darting behind that defender to make yourself free; or you just lost the ball, and have to bring all your glorious running momentum to a brutal stop, let go of the shame of being beaten, and gather up your frustration into tracking the other direction to try to get it back again.
Intensity on / off / on / switch / stop.
This is where I learnt what it means to dig deep, as sport-people call it: to feel completely exhausted and empty, and yet to throw your body again forward, to drive on, to find the speed, the power from somewhere deeper. It means switching a part of your head off: the part that's trying to convince you you're too tired, you can't manage, it's too much. You have to shift it so that all the focus is purely on managing to do what you need to do: just get there. I could do this over and over again, pushing, pushing, recovering in between the bursts and then finding the energy to do another one. There was always some more left to find. I love this cycle. It's at the same time exhausting, energising, exciting and immensely satisfying.
But it was also something else, all of this pushing and bursting. It brought me into a feeling of urgency, emergency. It tapped into the mode of fighting against some deadly threat, as if survival would depend on it: hunted.
I didn't know how to fit this into running long distance. The kind of intensity I drew on in this urgent, survival mode, I couldn't keep for a longer time. So I would go on a long run that was actually just made up of fast sections alternating with slow ones, or I would do a thousand variations on sprint or speed training, intervals, running fast bursts of different lengths. If it wasn't running, it was circuit training or training in the gym. I was forever scheming up new fitness or running drills, bringing the intensity up to full, testing, pushing. I can get very excited about this kind of training. I really do enjoy it.
And still there was always this undercurrent of a hunted animal. It was as though I needed to push myself into this state, finding a point where I couldn't go on and then forcing myself over it, fighting against something. It felt a bit like war. There was a lot of pressure and anxiety inside, which I had no idea how to name, let alone deal with, and which I needed to release it somehow. It was a pretty good strategy. It helped me relax. But it didn't really change anything.
These days, after a lot of work on dealing with those feelings in other ways, I have less of the fight-or-flight thing pumping through my system, and there is less of a need to run. But it's a bit like a drug that I have to be careful with. Sometimes I find myself slipping in the wrong direction, training more again, and getting pulled back into the urgent-hunted feeling afterwards, and not even noticing until the next day. So yeah, if you see me running, maybe just make me stop for a chat.
