Running is music, there is no need for music in the ears, “on the other hand, it is no coincidence that in classicism the foot is the unit of measurement of the lines”. Mauro Covacich, who has thousands of kilometers in his legs and without headphones, listens to the wind in his hair, the landscape that makes a wave and the body that screams. In all the outings, rain or shine, he had time to build his philosophy of running which has become the book On the run, a personal essay, an athletic autobiography as he himself defined it.
In search of the self
There are no training tables, nor advice for sports practice; the lines flow from experience, from encounters, from loneliness, from asceticism through sweat and become confession and school of life: Covacich is an ascetic who shows us the way through which we can have peace and feel good because starting to run means accept the pain, experience the self we don’t know, and it beats and suffers. The writer, with 5 thousand other fans, has just closed the 30 kilometers from Cortina to Dobbiaco and his sister’s question is everyone’s: “But amateurs of what?”.
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Self-lovers, in search of the self, even if they fear it. Five, ten, twenty kilometers, up to 42.195 of the marathon, the extreme sacrifice that will lead to an elsewhere for the elect: “This is what excites the athlete, at least in the beginning: the asceticism, the deprivation, the metamorphosis” and ” the marathon runner is an unarmed samurai who makes himself his opponent ». To the point of defeating him because “every marathon is the fulfillment of a palingenesis”. If you have run, you will understand why you feel “addicted” and, if you have never run, Covacich will make you get out of your chair, get out and test yourself. Because running is better as an introspective practice than a session with a psychologist or the magma of the dark that settles and burns.
Crucial encounters
Then, there are the meetings: in Covacich, who in 2003, in Hungary, after meeting seven beautiful athletes running, wrote A perdifiato, happens to be awarded by Stefano Baldini, gold medal in Athens 2004, or to interview Haile Gebrselassie, two Olympic gold medals, and the more philosophical the questions are, the more he laughs. All simple for a champion with muscles with the rhythm of the world incorporated, a little less for the others because “those who run are at war and would really like to be at peace”.
On the run, Mauro Covacich, The ship of Theseus, pp. 159, € 15