Why we run

I don't want this blog to turn into one of those blogs where I detail laboriously all my training runs but today was special. I can only suppose that its due to being in the tapering phase, where the training volume is reduced significantly, so that I have much more energy than usual. I'm also a bit nervous to write about it, as if I were tempting fate but, what the hell, I don't seriously believe in that crap - anything can still go wrong in the Marathon for any number of reasons, none of them being that I have somehow "jinxed" myself.

(I am touching wood as I write.)

Today just felt great and I wanted to write about it, more than anything just to remind myself in the future what it should feel like. The run was a 20 minute warm-up, followed by two 4km runs a bit slower than my marathon pace. I judged this pace by my heart rate but ended up running them both much faster than I expected. I thought something was either wrong with my watch or with me, it felt so easy and fluid. And now, I really don't feel tired; quite the opposite - I have this nice tingling feeling in my legs, my lungs feel bigger than normal and I feel wide awake. This is the famous "runner's high" that comes from the endorphins coursing through my body.

This is why we run.