By Uta Pippig
Running is an awesome sport. It has the advantage of keeping you fit without requiring much equipment: a pair of running shoes and somewhere to run are enough. Just set aside some time to run, and if you can find someone to run with, that’s even better. The struggle is that sometimes you have to give yourself a push to take the first few steps and get out the door, but it takes only a little while before you start to enjoy running, feeling refreshed and liberated.
I was 13 when I discovered that athletics could be fun. My first real running experience was with the sports club Blau-Weiss Petershagen, in the town where I grew up. We trained three times a week for about two hours each session, which may sound like a lot, but it wasn’t, because the training was so varied that I was never bored. We didn’t just run, but also did high jumping, long jumping, played soccer or handball, and went skiing in winter. Of course, it was also important to win, to run the relay races fast and develop ambition, but my fondest memory of this time is being with my friends and the carefree atmosphere of the team. My favorite experience was the two-week training camps in summer: together with other athletes, having lots of fun and being away from our parents.
Initially, my parents tried to keep my interest in sports in check. They wanted me to concentrate more on school work than running. They saw me less as an Olympic athlete than as a successful doctor who would one day follow in their footsteps. But once I was really into this beautiful sport, no one could take the passion I’d discovered for running away from me.
To me, it’s always been important to have goals, yet when I began running, achieving fast times wasn’t much of a consideration. I hardly used a stopwatch, usually only for short sprints on the track or when I wanted to test myself on my favorite 8-kilometers (5-mile) circuit. Otherwise, I simply kept it fresh by trying out new running routes, in the forest or on the road, in the flats or in the hills. I loved going with the training group to the sea in the summers and running along the beach. In autumn and winter, it was cross-country that I loved the best.
What I liked best as a young girl was the fun we had training and the feeling of being among friends in a team. The bond formed by my teammates always extended far beyond just the sport we were competing in; we were a family of friends who helped, supported and cared for each other. You can imagine how much easier this made my first competitive outings. We just went ahead and raced, dressed in cotton shorts and shirts and wearing canvas shoes, far from today’s high-tech gear, but confident that we could run fast if we had trained enough and were focused.
