My blog

My first attempt ended in complete failure. I was about forty at the time and busy developing my professional career, I completely ignored the issue of taking care of my fitness. With a friend from the village, with whom we would drink every Friday evening, or rather, glasses of whiskey and Coca-Cola, we made a firm resolution to add some sport to our weekly rituals. Running seemed to us to be the easiest discipline, one that did not require sophisticated equipment, and in addition, we had access to a treadmill immediately after leaving the house, thanks to the fields surrounding our village and the nearby Kabacki Forest.

On a sunny Sunday morning, dressed in freshly purchased T-shirts, shorts and running shoes, we met on the main street of our village and chose Wilanów, about eight kilometres away, as the destination for our first ever run.

The first hundred meters went quite smoothly. Around the two-hundredth meter, we started having trouble catching our breath and having cramps, and around the three-hundredth meter, our bodies completely gave out. We walked the rest of the way, wondering how it was possible for anyone to enjoy jogging.

A few weeks after my first running experience, we were vacationing with wealthy friends at their summer home. During our first breakfast together, the tennis instructor, who was usually taken on vacation to coach children, asked rhetorically, "I'm going to start jogging every day. Maybe someone would like to join me?" Neither she nor I expected anyone to respond positively to this proposal, but I began to analyze: I don't like running, I'll have trouble keeping up with her, I don't leave home without breakfast, and I came here to relax. On the other hand, the opportunity to jog in the middle of summer on the Spanish Riviera, under the watchful eye of a young and athletic instructor, may not come again for a long time.

And so, the next day, at seven in the morning, I stood on the terrace in my running gear. The plan was as follows: we run two kilometers to the beach, jump into the sea for a short swim, and run back home. And so it went, every day, for two weeks.

We ran together every day, but the instructor completely ignored me, she ran at her own pace and I couldn't catch up with her, so we ran separately.

The first few days were hardly jogging. It was more of a brisk walk, interspersed with a jog every now and then. The morning swim in the Mediterranean Sea was indeed a great pleasure, but the two kilometres of the exaggeratedly named "run" that preceded it and followed it were not really enjoyable. The thing about this jog was that every time, sooner or later, I felt that my strength was running out and I had to rest, changing the jog to walking for a while. It seemed to me that it was impossible to get your body to a state where you could run and run continuously, without rest, for a long time. The awareness of this impossibility was my biggest problem with running. Despite this, I tried to lengthen the jog sections and increase their frequency every day as much as I could, while reducing the time and frequency of rest.

The turning point came unexpectedly on about the seventh day. I ran two kilometers to the sea without any rest, and I stopped not because I ran out of energy, but because the planned distance had ended. I remember being euphoric at that moment. I felt as if I had accomplished something that was impossible. Until the end of the trip, I never rested during the run, and those two-kilometer runs became a huge pleasure. And that's how I fell in love with running.

It's been over ten years since then. I run two or three times a week, and since the beginning of the pandemic, every day.

My daily dose is always six kilometers. I have several fixed routes around the house. When I travel, I always take my running shoes and clothes with me, because running in an area that I don't know is especially enjoyable for me.

I run in all conditions. I don't mind rain, snow or low temperatures.



I have run in "Run Warsaw" a few times. It is a race organized every year in early October in Warsaw over a distance of ten kilometers, in which several thousand people take part. My best result in this race was 57 minutes, which means that I was not last and I placed in the group of forty-five-year-olds in about three/fourths of the pack (three quarters of the runners were ahead of me). For comparison, the best runner in this race always runs around 29 minutes, which means that the winner runs the distance at an average speed of over 20 kilometers per hour. Interestingly, several eighty-year-olds always start in this race, and the worst of them have results at the level of 45 minutes...

I don't know what is the most enjoyable thing about running: the endorphin rush, the awareness of taking care of your own health, or the systematic overcoming of "I don't feel like it". However, of all the triggers of happiness hormones such as laughter, exercise, acupuncture, sunbathing, chocolate, weed, and orgasm, running is definitely one of the cheapest and most accessible ways.