It’s 2:30 and I can’t sleep. That’s why after an hour and half of trying to fake sleeping, I decided to just get up and write a blog post instead. All the things I wanted to say where already filling my head anyway.

This feeling is new to me. Usually, I’m the first one in any group of people to fall asleep. And until today, I’ve believed that even running wouldn’t change that fact. I was wrong — I just hadn’t experienced a tough enough exercise. Now, in the past two and a half hours since finishing my run, I’ve experienced everything from exhaustion to feeling shivery, to feeling so sweaty that I thought I was melting, and now, this feeling of extreme alertness that makes it impossible to fall asleep. Just like trying to sleep in the middle of the day.

So what happened?

Tonight, at 8:15 P.M., I set out to run for 30 kilometers (I didn’t think the timing would have been that bad, and after all, as a working dad, I didn’t want to waste too many of my precious minutes of family time). My previous top distance was 27, so I thought it would be good to increase it by three kilometers. 27 had been no big deal at all, so 30 should be easy too, right?

Maybe. I will never get to know that as I got lost in the beginning of my run and ended up running four kilometers more than I had planned, jumping straight from 27 to 34. And that’s not all, I also noticed that when you are lost, you instinctively run faster, trying to find your way back to your original route, or any familiar route whatsoever. Because of that, I ran the distance in 3 hours and 45 minutes — faster than the 27 kilometers from last time!

At the end of the run, for the first time, my body started refusing to run: My feet ached all the way from toes to knee, and my brain was telling me to just stop running and walk instead. But when I tried walking, I noticed that counter-intuitively, running was easier: during the few steps I tried to walk, all I could think of was stopping for good. That wasn’t an option, so I decided to just keep running.

Oh boy, it felt good to make it all the way home. Not sure how long a distance I had covered, I opened Google maps and updated my route, exhausted and starting to feel a shiver of cold go through my body.

Lessons learned: Do your longer runs in the morning rather than at nigh if you enjoy your sleep. Carry a map with you if not sure about every twist and turn in your route. Don’t run too fast if you get lost.

My practice continues: I don’t think I will run tomorrow, but definitely the day after tomorrow, and in four weeks, I will be racing the Finlandia marathon in Jyväskylä. Wish me luck, and check out the cause I’m training for: peace and development — children — in Darfur.

There is so much I want to say about running, but if I don’t want to ruin the nice focus of this blog post, I have to stop here. Stay tuned, if running is something you’d like to experiment with!