I love distance running.

It is often painful, it’s rarely actually that fun, but it’s addictive.

Like all addictions, it takes more than it gives, distance running is unashamedly, unapologetically selfish, it demands time, blood, pain, sweat, concentration. Hours spent in the rain, in the cold, in blistering heat, days spent stiff at the hips and knees, odd cuts where none should be, friction burns, blistered nipples, battered feet, creaking joints.

But it does give, like all the most serious addictions it gives back something you actually need, something you are missing, never had. To me, running makes the world make sense.

There’s a point past the ninety minute mark when things shift, when you’re through the easy miles and starting to push, when the tightness in your stomach goes and before your muscles really begin to ache, where its just about mindset, physical strain sublimating into mental, when you are suddenly alone.

The world slides into focus, you are present, really truly present, the way animals are, the way children can be.
Seconds last longer, minutes smear into hours, like they did when you were small and the world was still real.

There is an immediacy and clarity in that middle distance that exists nowhere else anywhere near as accessible.
All of the meaningless things we pile ontop of life just gone, nothing left except ragged breathing, pumping limbs, the ecstasy of motion.

An animal in its element, doing what it’s born to do.