There is Within Me an Invincible Summer…
I have just returned from running some intervals along my Almunecar sandy strip of beach… I absolutely loved every minute.
There is something about taking my shoes off that has rekindled in me a true desire to run…
Any sense of ‘have to go running’ has left me, and I look forward to racing along my beach, jumping over the surf when the waves are bigger to reach the end and jog back to run it all over again!
I am taken back to Hope Cove in Devon where we used to holiday as a family.
I was fifteen years old, and I had just started to take my running more seriously… My coach set me barefoot sessions running along the beach ankle deep in the sea…
I totally loved it then and I love it now.
I mentioned to my friend Fi that my new blog and vlog is in preparation for my ‘summer sojourn’, when I plan to run on sandy beaches all over the world and write as I run…
‘It’s always summer where you are Ju’, she said and I was reminded then of the Albert Camus quote that has always spoken to me…
‘And in the midst of winter, I found that there was within me an invincible summer…’
It resonated with me when I first discovered it, as my life’s journey has been about clearing away the ‘winter within’, any energy that is blocked or stuck, so that I might create a life from the truth of who I am. So that the life I dream into being is from my truth and not from my pain.
It is what I teach and how I live….
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running. I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.
As a little girl I ran barefoot for many years, and then I put on shoes to race around the world. Fifty years later I am travelling the world as a nomad with my husband Anadi and I have taken off my shoes and I am running barefoot again….
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Email : juliachitaylor@gmail.com
