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"Make it quick . Run like hell"
Lemmy Kilmister on Motörhead's 2013 studio album 'Aftershock', track 2: 'Coup De Grace'

"[T]try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides."
C.G. Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301

"Win or be damned" It went trough my head before I knew I had to win -- or be damned. I was the only non-atheletic-club-member; a soloist. My spirit rode my body like a jockey on the back of a horse. Everything transcended into opportunity. Pain is only an indication of where potential for growth lies. Go trough it and you grow. It's a human law. It opens doors to slip into dark corners that otherwise remain closed.

Because being the fastest that Saturday morning they gave me an award for it -- and that is the great thing about competitive sport: you win when you are the first to finish. Not, as in the arts or politics, because you have a way of charming the jury to award you (or annoying them and become an official looser). Winning in the arts, with all thou respect, is vulgar in a way. Like being appointed Buddhist Of The Year, or Employee of the Month. It's politics. Winning happens in the mind first. Screw awards -- excuse my French -- they merely tell the story of the people giving them away! Enjoy the game together. What Reinoud Eleveld (we spent two weeks with team and crew filming a Golf-pro training-camp in Portugal once) calls: The Spirit Of The Game.

Why are you showing the cup then in that slickly lit pack shot above; are you trying to impress?

Because from then, at that age (1982, 14 years at the time, the age of my oldest son now) what I remember is the chuckled look on the official's face while handing me the award at the price-ceremony afterwards. They didn't know who I was, where I was from. All others where decent paying members of a running club, decently dressed. I ran on normal shoes, my style must have been going against the status quo (which it has been ever since; generating quit a few laughs now and then -- which you get used to in a way -- focussing on what matters: having fun). It felt like having beaten something in how the system itself wants things to turn out. The winner is expected to come from within.

What they didn't know was that I had trained for 3 or 4 years prior to that.