How I’m not a runner, not yet.
The app congratulates me. It tells me I’m a runner. I’m not though.
My knees still creak. My hips remain rocks wrapped tight in a skin suit. Despite a bit of healthy living, my upper body still seems slightly too heavy for my legs.
Fifteen minutes in, my knees soften. My hips relax. My head, shoulders and torso lift themselves towards the sky rather than pressing themselves down into my thighs.
I find my rhythm, my breathe and I lose myself into the music that pumps in through my headphones so as to drown out the sound of my rasping breath. I listen — really listen — to lilts and rhymes and lyrics of songs and they speak to me as loud as songs did when I was in my teens and early 20s.
I connect with something less day to day, less ‘must-do’ and I become propelled forward by an energy and an enthusiasm and a determination that I long thought I’d lost.
I don’t get any sense that I am running away from anything. Rather, it feels that I am running towards something important, something good, something truly uplifting.
I don’t know what I am running towards. I hope I recognise it when I get there.