Running was always part of my life since I was 5 years old. I participated in all races our school or city organised and I loved the competition, the atmosphere. Back then all these races happened only on roads. We didn't talk about trail running, we had only running in our dictionary. The small city I come from has no hills at all. Can you imagine that? Everything is flat and we don't have any kind of hiking places. Thus we had no trail running at all.
Between 2009-2011 I spend quite a lot of time in London visiting friends, and I also had the chance to live there for a year before I went to university. I had this great person in my life who was a true activist fighting for animal rights.
Through her I got involved of course, and we started saving foxes. We joined a group of people who were fighting against fox hunting. Yepp! That's right! These posh, rich people hopped on their horses in the weekend and went out into the woods with their 40 dogs, hunting for foxes. Which is ILLEGAL!
So here's what we did. Cameras and maps in the hand, running shoes on, walkie talkie in the pocket and go. Running in the woods searching for the people on their horses to prevent them from hunting those beautiful animals. Sometimes on the trails, sometimes off the trails between the trees. Up and down. We had weekends when we ran almost 20 km like that and I LOVED IT!
I loved that there were no roads to follow, you could basically go anywhere. You could choose the easy way sometimes or go up on the steep. No cars, only us and the nature. The air was fresh and chilli, the sun was filtering through the trees, everything was quite and all you could hear was your own breathing and horse hooves pounding.
Well, this is the short story how trail running found me. Actually how I found it :) Since that year for me running has meant running only on trails, out of the city in the quite. I love finding new paths, new scenery, going to places where there are no people, no buildings. I love the challenge of a steep hill or going down fast on downhill. It's kind of spiritual. After being out there I always get home fresh and charged.
I would love to hear your story! Share it with us here in a comment or in a message :)
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