They contain sharks and monsters too

  • Wednesday, September 26, 2012
  • 1


Why is that long rainy runs always seem to involve a long climb into a stiff headwind?
After spending half an hour crouched on all fours in the rain with my hand up to the elbow in a blocked drain I decide that I should go straight out on a run. After all I was already cold and soaked. And frustrated.
So after a quick change I ran off into the wind. Upwards and clockwise in the rain, to the summit of the woods on a day that even the dog walkers couldn't face.
I don't mind rain running, I embrace it like a monk, it shapes me and teaches me. It is something uncomfortable but oddly beneficial, instructing my character and transporting me into a more surreal world. I wouldn't want it to be my default running weather day in and day out but there is an exhilaration that I get from being out in the elements. Perhaps it's the last faint echoes of the caveman in me. I love the sombre mood of the wet darkened tree's, the burnt umber colour of the earth and it's heaviness. I love the deep black, inky puddles. Standing to catch my pluming breath I peer into them, imagining they are like Alice's looking glass. I imagine vast, mad and colourful worlds that lie through and beyond them. I feel fear, they contain sharks and monsters too. They are too black. Perhaps the rain shrinks my physical world too much, narrowing it to a few feet. Maybe I am too alone. Whatever the reason I force my imagination back into it's box and get on with running. This is something tangible and true, this is my embrace.
Irony being what it is, I return home after 12 miles and discover that I have to put my hand up to the elbow in the toilet. Someone has put a wad of cardboard into it. Possibly, just beyond the U bend, sharks and monsters live too.

1 comment :

  1. Another favourite quote from a blog "... I feel fear, they contain sharks and monsters too...."

    Bhundu, I love the idea that this phrase you penned is so true, poetic is not the word

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