#running stories

[lifelaughterlightrunning]

It was a beauty morning for a run 🌞❤

[she-walked-away]

Just ran a full six miles on the treadmill for the first time! I am drenched in sweat but I feel so accomplished! I usually alternate between a 5K on the treadmill or really only 2 miles a day ever since my stress fracture so it's a big deal for me :)

[therunningstories]

EPISODE 8: The Rise of Running Part 2

EPISODE 8: The Rise of Running Part 2

In the Rise of Running of Running Part 2 our The Running Stories Radio podcast looks at the social aspect of running and the importance of a strong community. We talk to Nick Carter at Absolute Running in Gosport, and visit We Run in Leicester to find out more about how runners of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities are coming together for a social run. And maybe a pint. We also welcome…

View On WordPress

[therunningstories]

Episode 6: Run For Your Money

Episode 6: Run For Your Money

On Running Stories Radio we’ve featured stories about some astonishing accomplishments; not just with challenges taken on and completed but also with charity fundraising through running. So this episode we focus on all things fundraising from how to prepare mentally if you’re doing a sponsored run yourself; to a project that gives you the chance to run around the world whilst improving the…

View On WordPress

[therunningstories]

Running Irritations

1. Dog walkers Please don’t let your dogs walk all over the path, jump at me, bark at me and try and trip me up by tangling their lead around my feet! All I want is a few clear inches on the path where I can run past without fear of tripping over your pooch or having my ankles bitten! 2. Needing a pee We’re all familiar with that dreaded tightness in your bladder when you know you are going to…

View On WordPress

[therunningstories]

How it started

It was a cold early January morning when a group of people who’d never ran before gathered outside a sports store in Oranmore, a hamlet of Galway. Lead by Sean Conroy, the store manager/owner, and his team, these forty-ish people, ranging in age, size, sex and ability, walked and jogged along the coast road in the cold and rain every Saturday for nien weeks. As those weeks went on the group got…

View On WordPress

[gretaruns]

what i think about when i think about running

I think about the velvet grass, I think about the tartan track, blood red in the evening sun and garishly white under the refraction of my sweat.

I think about the team, a conflated mass of sweat and fire and tears. The blood does not come if you do not think about it. Pain is no longer pain. I think about the dry cotton mouths and the white spit sizzling on the burning polyurethane, the ponytail sifting through the gale of wind and weaving through the slightly tan shoulders, beating methodically against the neck.

I think about the knees, lap one like a foal learning to walk. Lap two, buckling ever so slightly. Lap three, and the tendons have loosened, the bones have polished under the pressure and hellfire leaks through your muscles. Your calves are unstoppable at this point. You are the monster of this red oval. The ground calls out your name but you can’t seem to hear anything but your steady heartbeat thrumming against your sternum like a withering flame.

I think about the sweat, the single bead that represents your spirit, trickle past the shell of your ear, and down your jaw. Sweat is the elixir of the track. Some collects above your lip and it tastes like salt, but it’s so much more. It’s so much more. It’s laps and intervals and how you can say fartlek without snickering - okay, maybe you still do.

I think about how the song that was stuck in your head during the warm up has long since disappeared, and the melody of unruly panting coupled with the upbeat footsteps and the voice that has entwined itself around your head. It’s squid tentacles clinging on your thoughts and screaming at you. It is an angry child and you are the royal highness of this running board. You are not obliged to listen.

I think about how your quadriceps burn and your elbows ache and your brow is the analogy of the Niagara Falls, and you can feel that familiar warmth climb its way up your shoulders to your neck, along the smooth curve of your throat to your head, and the flush weighs your head down, but it’s a pleasant burn. It is the burn of the blood pulsating wildfire in your veins, of your lungs straining from your body and your chest heaving with pleasure. Your feet have never fit these shoes so well before, you notice. You glance down at your companions, to the instruments who have known more death than Napoleon’s sword.

Sometimes it ends all too soon. Sometimes, the euphoria slips back into the astro, and there is a rock mass pressing into your airway and your heave for a bottle of water, for your towel and banana. Sometimes, you close your eyes and try to remember what it’s like to be on the track, to attempt to replicate the drowning liberation and sore numbness; but you find out sooner or later that only the pirates will ever know what it was like to sail the rift.

In the moment of your back pressed into the blinding hot ground, you have known no greater ache.