Hello running time, you are my church.

Ahhh running.

Maybe it’s just the runner’s high from yesterday, but I’m waxing poetical about running. And while it’s getting a tad colder in Canberra, and also the sun has pretty much set by the time I get home, so I don’t have the opportunity to do my Bridge-To-Bridge run, I am substituting it for some good ol’ treadmill time.

Of course I am by no means a marathon runner. If any of you are picturing a svelte antelope-like creature, bounding tirelessly over the tarmac of the city jungle-scape, you’ve got the wrong blogger in mind.

I probably look more like this…

But there’s something zen-like about loosing yourself in your stride. Ear phones drowning out your measured, rhythmic, sometimes gasping breath. Drowning out the distant burr of traffic. Drowning out the wavering sounds of the conversations of others as you pass them by. A watery grave of melody and music surrounds everything around you.

And while at the beginning of a long run, I do tend to dwell on thoughts which I really shouldn’t be dwelling on, some when throughout my run I let all of that go and there’s nothing in my mind but the basic animal thought of making my body move. My heartbeat, the sweat building down my back and chest , the tread of my feet on the ground, these are all the sensations that matter.

This is my world.

For the next hour (and if I’m feeling very motivated, or the runners high kicks in maybe two hours) these are the only things that matter.

Debt. Work. Friends. Family. Relationships (or my complete and total lack of skill in them). Cars. Television. The Internet. Caturdays. This blog.  All these thoughts stop their constant and never-ending pinballing all over my brain.

And for a little while I’m at peace.

For a little while, I’m sane.

For a little while, at least, I’m free.