Post run depression – Pre run shivers

The whole four hours it took me to go through the exercise waiting to run the NY marathon gave me ample opportunity to reflect. It is however a bit odd that I feel more at ease when reflecting in the English rather than my own language! I don‘t know if the English language provides we with the distance needed for philosophical speculations, but if the shoe fits, then who cares.

I arrived on Staten Island around 7am and did not start running until 10:20 (third wave). It was dark and cold. The wind was blowing and people huddled on the ground, trying to keep warm, or maybe they were just trying to stay alive. I cursed the fact that I only had my running shorts and jacket but thanked my lucky stars that I had brought with me a sweater which I intended to leave behind for the homeless and needy.

Sitting on the ground for three hours, shivering and only getting up every forty minutes to have some hot tea was not my idea of the ideal picnic. Easy questions like why I was doing this, what an earth are the Americans thinking when storing forty thousand people out on the grass for all this time without shelter came to mind, and last but not least I questioned my own sanity in all this.

As it is difficult to express feelings in words, it was only natural that I turned to the poetry that I have listened to a million times since 1974. The themes that circulated in my head were those of the perception of time, speed and eternity. I used these concepts to relate to the text, explain and justify my presence in circumstances that no sane person would ever agree to be subjected to. I found comfort and explanation in the words of Roger Waters when he wrote:

Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.

Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

Svo mörg voru þau orð :-)