Couple dance
Jogging with your partner: is it okay?
© Dusan Petkovic / Shutterstock
With the partner go jogging together? That usually went wrong for our columnist because the ladies were too slow. But with this one everything is different.
In the beginning everything was fine. You and I at eye level and next to each other on your daily round through a fragrant pine forest. Now you run in front of me – and faster uphill than I go downhill. Let’s go jogging together, you said. You: twice as fast as me. Me: twice as heavy as you. Now I pull my legs behind me like two sacks of potatoes.
Everything was better before
Fight, I have to fight! Licked blood. And taste it in my mouth. That metallic note on the tongue between grinding teeth. Hemoglobin! The iron-rich protein complex of the red blood cells, which is expanding right now in my throat like a chocolate kiss in the microwave. Chocolate!
The last time I looked after you, you took my breath away in your backless evening dress. Now in a track jacket and a rocking ponytail. Hardly touch the ground while running, I can’t get my feet up, I whistle out of the last hole. Would rather disappear in one, dive into the bottomlessness.
In the past, it would have been different. Most certainly. I used to lift weights in the gym like a forklift, climb rocks and run obstacle courses. Now I seem to have become an obstacle myself. To you.
When the woman runs away
For the record: I don’t mind that a woman is in better shape than I am. But does it have to be my own? I always want to look good next to you. Or just run, lie, fly. But now my tongue is hanging out like the water slide after an emergency landing. “Should I slow down?” You ask. Never!
Three, four, five steps, then lightning strikes. Cramp-like pains are in the upper abdomen. Side stitches on the left at the level of the spleen, side stitches on the right in the liver area. The arms heavier than my rattle, but somehow I get them pulled up, I heaved them over my throbbing head, like a bank robbery.
You just run, run and don’t look back I stop and bend over, put my arms on my burning thighs, look down at muddy shoes. The next moment I feel your hand on my shoulder. “Ah,” I say. “You are. Yes. Come back.” – “No,” you answer. “I lapped you.”
BJÖRN KRAUSE is afraid that his wife will run away from him. He is not alone in worrying.