I'm complete rubbish at
maths. Especially when I run. So, while I intended on running 20 km
yesterday evening, I did 30 instead. Oops! Oh well. It could happen
to anyone.
I started by leaving
the car a few kilometers away from the AIK meeting place and then
tried to run there with a little detour over what strongly resembled
the impact crater of a medium-sized meteorite. They are taking huge
bites out of our beloved Vitberget, you see, to build expensive
houses. Where there used to be dark corridors of pine and fir forest,
there are now mud and tall fences and cranes and men in reflective
gear working these premium lots until they look like every single
other premium lot in the country. Our beloved white mountain is
bleeding, its open wounds not only an eyesore but an ugly indication
of where our society is headed.
 |
| In memoriam |
Put off by the sight of
dead trees thrown unceremoniously across what used to be a forest
path, I tried to find other ways to get to my destination. More
fences, more strict warnings of planned explosions in the area to
level the ground from a mountain to an ant hill. I tried to
concentrate on the podcast I was listening to. Managed to leave this
so-called progress behind and get to a less civilised trail. The
clock was ticking and I had to get to my running buddies.
The debate among us
lasted all but a second: we would skip our usual Wednesday run on
Vitberget and try Kraftloppet's route. Kraftloppet is an 11 or 20 km-
trail race, and this year it is scheduled for this Saturday. No one
seemed too keen on negotiating, or facing for that matter, a deeply
scarred environment. So Kraftloppet's route it was.
Some of us did the 11
km-version, but most of us picked the longer one – myself included.
That was when bad maths came into play. I had already run 6 km. My
brain somehow succeeded in translating 11 + 6 km to a little over 10
km and decided the short route was way too short for my intentions,
therefore I had to run the 20 km one, which would obviously bring me
closer to my goal of running a total of 20 km. Yeah. I told you I was
rubbish at this.
Hey, I'm good at other
things. Like procrastinating, or pretending to be bad at maths so
that I can run further than I had planned.
Not once during those
couple of hours I spent running with these guys and girls through the
woods did I regret my decision. Not once did I feel bored or tired. I
did start recalculating how long my run would turn out to be
and got it (almost) right this time (when it was – conveniently -
too late to turn back), and then wondered briefly if my light,
wholesome dinner consisting of a piece of nectarine pie and ice cream
an hour earlier would suffice to see me through it. I skipped with
energy, chatted away, looked forward to my watch showing those double
digits that would make this a really long run instead of just
an ordinary long run. Those double digits are, of course, completely
arbitrary, as what a really long run is is vastly different from one
person to another. I've had friends log ultra runs as distance
dittos. I'm not quite there yet. Don't think I'll ever be.
I took an extra detour
on the way back to the car, despite the fact that I suddenly felt
really tired, as soon as I left my friends. Is it a little crazy to
want to round up the numbers to that magical limit of 30 km? Then I'm
bonkers. I may have been dropped on my head as a baby. I
collapsed into the car with all the elegance of a drunken one-legged
pirate. A really satisfied drunken one-legged pirate.
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