Flying Without Wings

Tweet

Running fast... Feeling the wind in your hair, provides an almost sensual pleasure. It feels good especially on occasions when you're rested and eager to run, and you've found a perfect course with good footing and great scenery, or a pleasant running partner. What could be better? We like running and our ability to run fast pushes many of us out of the door and down the road, or into the woods in the mornings. The pure joy... the exhilarating moment when you are breezing past the world. It's hot-blooded ecstasy, soaring intensity, when you can't feel the pavement, you can't hear your heart pounding and you're flying without wings. Running fast doesn't take special talents... you don't need expensive equipment, nor do you need to train on a track, although good coaching certainly can help, and tracks are where a lot of fast runners do hang out. All running fast requires is mainly a change of attitude with a willingness to experiment with different training methods. If you're a beginner, running fast means merely getting started. If you've never run before, except in your childhood, simply to jog for a few hundred meters is to move faster than if you were to walk that same distance. Improvement comes easily when you begin from a low fitness base. The best advice anyone can offer a beginner is, "Just do it!" Begin easily, by taking a few fast steps forward. Walk and jog without worrying whether there is anybody looking over your shoulder. Don't be shy, or embarrassed... stride forth with purpose. Anybody looking at you... Specifically non-runners... probably does so in envy for it's not everybody who has the courage to begin. Beginners occupy a unique and fortunate position in the running world, because every move is upward. One of the joys of being a beginner is that you continue to get better. Everything is improvement until you reach that first plateau; an innocent time of joy in any runner's life that a many would like to return to. How to begin? The answer to that question is that it's all about motivation. Beginners, particularly those who are overweight, need to walk first, beginning with a half hour, three or four days a week. In starting, it's a good idea to jog a short distance until slightly out of breath, walk to recover, then jog some more. Jog, walk. Jog, walk. After a while, you will achieve an ability to run a mile without stopping. Keep increasing on this and before you know it, you will be running at speed, with the wind blowing through your hair, providing that hot-blooded ecstasy, that soaring intensity, when you can't feel the pavement, you can't hear your heart pounding and you'll be flying without wings.