This was, by all accounts, a quiet year. No extraordinary encounters with people or animals. No extreme weather events. But a record fell at the end of it, and that made it another significant milestone in my running life.
The months passed quickly, in the usual rhythm and the usual conditions. What changed was the frequency: from five runs a week, I moved to five or six as a regular habit. The standard distance stayed at ten kilometers, but twelve became common. There was a stretch on my route — an extra kilometer each way — that practically begged to be included. And once I started adding it, the picture shifted: twelve became the real normal, and ten became the short run. I didn’t run anything under ten the entire year.
Ten Thousand Kilometers
In the first days of April, I crossed the ten-thousand-kilometer mark. Ten thousand kilometers on foot since the day I started. That number needed a moment to sink in.
Becoming a Foreigner at Home
Late summer brought a ten-day work trip back to my home country. Once again, I felt how strange the familiar had become. It was oddly jarring to see everything in my native language — signs, shops, conversations around me. I’d only been abroad for three years, yet something had already shifted. I’d always thought people exaggerated when they talked about feeling like a stranger in their own country. Now I was beginning to understand. It was as if I’d taken a fork in the road and could still see the other path, but it was getting further away. We still spoke the language at home, I called people back there, I read the news online — and yet. I’ll write later about where that process led.
Running-wise, the trip went as all trips did: I packed my gear, found a route near wherever I was staying, and ran. This time the terrain was especially pleasant — I was on the edge of a hilly region, with a clearly uphill road that broke out of the town within a few hundred meters. Forest, a small waterfall along the way, a stretch with steps — a solid workout for the hour. Uphill on the way out, downhill on the way back. Downhill running is an interesting question, by the way: it requires its own technique, and I’ve found — especially on longer stretches — that it’s actually harder and more taxing on the legs than running uphill.
The Snowstorm
As the year drew to a close, the kilometers and the outings kept piling up. By late October I was at 2,540 kilometers; by the end of November, 2,780. The three-thousand mark was within reach.
Before I got there, though, December delivered one more event. A heavy snowfall was forecast for one particular day. I usually ran in the evenings, but that morning I got up early and went out in the dark, minus three degrees, so the day wouldn’t be lost — and because a big snow could mean several days off.
At the far end of my route there was a steep three-hundred-meter climb. For runners who like to push hard at the finish, it was perfect — you arrived home gasping whether you wanted to or not. That morning, about two hundred meters before the climb, a few snowflakes appeared. Twenty meters later, the sky opened: intense, relentless snowfall. By the time I reached the top, I was in a full winter landscape. My clothes were caked in white. Snow that heavy was rare in that region, and part of me was glad — running in tough conditions always leaves me feeling better afterward. But that dose was more than enough.
The next day I couldn’t run because of the snow. Two days later, the thaw came overnight — but left behind patches of refrozen ice. In conditions like that, it’s easier to run on untouched snow than on the trampled, icy sections. But for that you need the right shoes. My regular pair, made for dry roads, would’ve been soaked through in a few hundred meters. That’s when the idea crystallized: I needed two pairs. One for dry conditions, one for rain, mud, and snow. I’ve followed that system ever since.
The Record
The second record of the year came just after Christmas: my run that day ended at exactly three thousand kilometers for the year. I was thrilled. Two records in one year. I thought about the person who used to hate running — and here he was, running this much by choice, because it had become a need.
I decided this would be the minimum from now on — three thousand every year. For a good while, it was. Then fate intervened. But I stayed a runner. Runner forever.
2009: 287 runs / 3,036 km
Since 2002: 1,344 sessions / 12,291 km