Travelling at My Own Speed
I finished working in London at about 6pm yesterday evening and went towards the underground at Victoria… The crowd of people trying to get down to the trains stretched back across the concourse…
I joined the throng and was slowly being moved towards the steps, when suddenly I decided I didn’t want to travel this way.
I broke free from the masses and made my way out onto the street.
In the past when I was a personal trainer, I used to run around London as a means of ‘transport’ to reach my clients…
I decided against this, mainly due to inappropriate clothing!
Instead I went across to an enquiry booth and asked a man about the bus routes.
He wrote down the bus numbers that I needed, to get me ‘home’, and so I clambered to the top of the next number 73 and enjoyed a tour of London, all twinkling in the night time lights.
It was a very meditative experience too, all the people around me were either sleeping, listening to music, or speaking in a foreign language.
We rumbled slowly through the streets of London town, ‘stop starting’ in all the traffic and my usual thirty to forty minute train journey, turned into a two hour bus ride…
But I loved it…
I reflected that I love the journey, I am happy ‘in between’…
I have spent my life running from gun to tape and learning to be in the step, to let the next take care of itself and to trust that by staying still and not putting pressure on ‘getting there’, everything unfolds in its own time…
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.
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