A Case of Justification

My extremely courageous, strong, indefatigable and disciplined brother has today run the Stockholm Marathon. I was there, and it was great. These people run 40 kilometres; and that is a looong way to run. My brother was determined to beat the 4 hour mark, and he did, with eight minutes to go. When I think of all the things we got up to, within the four hours he was running, it seems incomprehensible that he was jogging along all that time! While he was running, we were visiting people, we were leisurely strolling in and out of hundreds of shops, we were relaxing at cafés and we were sightseeing. Four hours is a long time to be running constantly; on asphalt … in the beating sun …

And now folks; this is how he justifies this madness: My brother trains a lot because training does your wellbeing a lot of good. Training makes sure one feels better physically for obvious reasons, but it also covers the mental wellbeing, as one is able to walk around feeling pleased with oneself for training. To go out running for long stretches several times a week, further goals are needed though, and Stockholm Marathon provides one of these to my brother. Thing is while he trains for the marathon he is not really training for the marathon. He is training to feel good, but he fools himself by telling himself he is training for the marathon.

The outmost perk of running a yearly marathon is, according to my brother, to be able to establish that one is at present, in as good a shape as last year. This probably explains the “really to old to run a marathon”-people you see along the track.

In case he should catch himself red-handed during the marathon, having fooled himself this is what he is training for, his trick up the back sleeve is to just tell himself “This is just another training round for the next marathon…”

We had a good laugh on the way back home in the evening, reading his tabloid horoscope: “Aquarius: Today you are taking it easy, just letting time pass.”