Race Director's Blog, post 002
Yesterday, an acquaintance of mine said — "My business is a huge intellectual work as opposed to the fun you’re having with your running". And I often hear people saying to me something like "Running is just not my cup of tea".
I would start telling about how good the running is for your health in response before, but now I just resort to the chicken-and-egg dilemma to make people look at running from the other perspective.
Look, we all are constantly chasing something. First — good work, then the money, then the things and we are never ready to let all the things we earned to go away under any circumstances. Business, intellectual effort, our duties — that's what comes to the fore. We eat on the run, take quick sandwiches to spare more time for work and we are sure that our brain just can not function without cola/coffee and muffins. We sleep 5-6 hours, complain about chronic fatigue (but still consider it a merit rather than anything else) and still whole heartedly thank God for every Friday (night)!
Sometimes, especially during Holiday Season, after writing and posting our New Year's Resolution on Facebook, we put on our running shoes and run.. up to the moment when the cycle of BIG INTELLECTUAL WORK starts over and new commitments get lost somewhere in our timeline.
Meet Oleg, a student of my running school, who had been living in such cycle until 52. Successful business, good house, expensive things, fine French and Italian wines with perfect cheese, travels — fantastic life ..with 155 kg body weight.
Something went wrong at the age of 52 though. No exercise, not even for 5 minutes, would be possible without short-breathing; blood pressure problems became common as well as endless colds... And then — complications, tons of antibiotics, hospital bed. As he recalls now, that was the moment when the world "RUN” started whirling in his head non-stop. And he run. Just one km first, then two and three and then he took a running technique class and his first half marathon in a while. Oleg came to my school at the age of 54. What happened next includes half marathons in Nice, Cannes, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, full marathons in Amsterdam and Moscow and numerous other starts. Oleg is 56 today! His personal record in 21.1 km is 1:49:00, the best time in full marathon — 3:53:49. He still remembers those blood pressure pills (that he didn't use by the way) and sometimes asks rhetorically: "Why didn't the doctor just write "RUN! RUN OR DIE!" on that prescription?"
May be at this point we should try and tell the work and the fun apart, and try to see what the egg is and who is the chicken ;-) May be it is not that much fun but is a true effort to organize your day the way you can go to bed at ten to be awake by six to have a proper training and then go to work energized to continue with your business, duties and other hard intellectual work? Isn't it an effort to do daily training to attain the feeling of lightness and aliveness that motivates you to take more thoughtful approach to daily work planing and food choices? And running some exciting race somewhere in Amsterdam, Chicago, Berlin or Antarctic and your personal result in it — isn't it a good reward?
On photo: Alexander and Oleg at Krasnoyarsk training camp, 2018