The Perfect Run - Five Ideas

Here are five inspirational thoughts on what makes the perfect run:

1. What makes a good run for me is to be able to say that I ran at all. It doesn't have anything to do with the distance or speed of the run or even if you are running on the trail, road or on a track - it's how you feel afterward. It's knowing that there was a time when you didn't run. It's time away from the kids, jobs, dogs, telephones, and answering stupid questions and away from the responsibilities that clog up life. It's a powerful moment when you realize that you are in total charge of what you are doing and your body is responding. It's total awareness of the situation. At some point you forget about the concerns of the day and suddenly are aware of yourself. You can feel yourself breathe, you can feel your heart beat and you can feel your legs moving as your run. Saying that we ran means we took time for yourself and that makes us all a bit less grumpy.

2. I think that the cool thing about the "perfect" run is that there is no consistency to what makes a perfect run. For instance - the perfect runs that stick out in my mind come down to falling in one or more of these categories:
*raining - snowing - hot as hell - windy
*trails - roads
*70 miles - 5 miles
*felt bad when I started - felt marvelous the whole way through
*ran by myself - ran with 10 others
*race - training run
So - I would say a run is "perfect" because it's
a) different!/new!/unique!
b) meets your needs / frame of mind at that instance in time.

3. My idea of a perfect run is running in Mt Gretna immediately after a new fallen snow. A two inch cushion of white under my feet as I glide through the mountain trails is my idea of great fun. A nip at my nose and the sound and sight of my breath sends my heart palpitating. To make it really special, I have to run up behind a big buck and send him prancing through the woods. The run ends ninety minutes later as sweat runs down the side of my face from the wool cap perched on top of my head. As I drive back home, I can't wait until I am back in the woods again.

4. The perfect run . . . I've only just begun . . . . (to run, last year about this time, and I'm fairly old !) Well, I would say the perfect run to me would be to find myself keeping up with Heidi Mobeus and placing somewhere in my age group. At this point, I would need to grow wings on my shoes to accomplish that. The perfect run . . . would be to experience the "picking off people coming down the home stretch" rather than having them passing me!

5. The perfect run? How about a marathon in which I don't collapse in the final five miles?