2006 was the year things shifted — not just in my running, but in my life. I had gone back to studying in the autumn of 2005, which meant less time for sport overall. Three hours of daily cycling during term time was simply no longer possible. But running fit. Running always fit.
The first three months were strong: 53 outings, a solid winter base. Cold mornings, some of them down to -10 degrees. I was running in the afternoons back then, time permitting, not early. Over the years that has changed more than once — mornings, evenings, both have their own logic. Running after work was always a kind of decompression chamber. However tired I felt going out, I came back feeling reset. Morning runs, on the other hand, were a way of arriving at the day already composed. Shower, and then nothing — not even a long or difficult day — could knock me off balance.
A Job Offer and another country
The bigger news: early in the year I received a multi-year position at a university abroad. I had been dreaming about something like this for a long time. It was one of two career peaks I had set for myself — I reached the other one a few years later. I had to leave my studies unfinished, but that was not a hard decision. Some opportunities don’t wait.
The months before the move were filled with preparation, anticipation, and one recurring question: what would the terrain be like? I had both a road bike and a mountain bike. My instinct was always the road, but if I was moving somewhere with forest trails rather than asphalt, that would be a problem. I packed the MTB, thinking it would handle whatever came.
The Route
We found a flat in a suburban part of one of Europe’s largest cities. The roads were excellent. The density was not. Traffic lights every hundred or two hundred metres for twenty kilometres out. Cars everywhere. I tried cycling for a while — three times after the September move, then I let it go. The conditions simply weren’t there.
Running, though, was a different matter. There was a route — good asphalt, lit in sections, manageable even after dark. Beside a busy road for part of it, so the air quality left something to be desired. But it worked. What I didn’t know at the time was just how much it would work: roughly a third of all the runs I have ever done in my life passed through that stretch. Around two thousand times. I ran it in every season, every weather, every mood.
No Longer Optional
By the end of the year, twenty runs a month had become normal. That’s roughly five times a week. Afternoons mostly, or early evenings, shaped by the work schedule.
Music had replaced the radio by then. The logistics of recording live broadcasts — with ads, news breaks, the full interruption cycle — had stopped being worth it. I loaded the MP3 player with a few gigabytes of whatever I liked and let it run. Three or four gigs lasts a long time when you’re doing an hour a day.
I remember thinking that autumn: at the start of this year, I had no idea I would be running in another country far from home by the end of it. But I was. And running had become the one constant. Whatever was shifting around me — country, language, daily routine — the run stayed. That was new. That mattered.
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2006: 179 runs / 1,840 km
Since 2002: 547 sessions / 4,197 km