Running Attachments

31 December 2006

19 km - 1 hour 41.02 minutes

New Year's Eve is a wonderful quiet mild and misty day. Simon and I set off for a long run, and as soon as we've run into a steady pace our conversation picks up.

We talk of attachments. I run the same circuit every other day, I get attached to it, I don't think about the route, and it lets me think about other things.

People get attached to places, they think of them as theirs, their home, the place where their hearts are. Especially if it's the places where they were happy.

That's why we get home sick, or miss or home places. A place, I say, is not a physical, geographical notion. It is more a state of mind, a feeling associated with the physical place.

And it does not have to be places. I think we miss the company, the excitement, the buzz and the camaraderie more than places.

I certainly have an attachment to running. As my dogs do. Does it make it our home place?

I don't know how we got to talking about this. But it seemed a conversation very sutiable for New Year's Eve when we sum up the past and plan for the future.

We both thought it was a much faster run than last Sunday, when we did the same 19 km route. I looked at the stopwatch, and it was only a minute faster.