Running
There is a school in Nowa Huta – a primary sports school. It has been named after a great runner and a hero – Janusz Kusociński. This is where at the beginning of the 1980s Piotr ran his first 1500 m during an athletics class. He didn’t want to run. When he wasn’t able to catch his breath he hid behind the nearby garages, and the PE teacher used highly motivational tools such as cables ... These are the origins of my running. I am confident that skiing, football, hockey, cycling, basketball and mountain climbing, all of which I pursued with all my heart as a young boy growing up in a working class district, have given me what I often resorted to in my later years during my running challenges: “Don’t give up! Come, on, keep on going!”.
This may sound strange, but my oncological “disabilities” were not as detrimental to my running abilities as the excessive kilograms which I had “collected” during the business-related period of my life. Years later, I give thanks to my physician in charge, who in a few words bluntly described the size of my biggest body part and the impact it was having on my health. This has finally persuaded me to swap my armchair for a treadmill in a gym. I only used to manage about 20-30 minutes at that time. Absolutely no results. No special diet. Accidental footwear. No control over breathing. It was a futile fight. Only on the morning of 1 January 2008 I finally got into the spirit of running. I donned a tracksuit, running shoes and set out to the Vistula boulevards with a strong resolve. I started to run regularly around the Błonia Park in Kraków. A loop of 3 km, three times a week, whatever the weather. I persevered. I bought my first “New Balance” running shoes. The progress was slow but my motivation was continuously increasing. The distance kept on getting longer. Finally, the time came for my first “real” run. On 30 March 2008 I managed 21 km in a half-marathon – the 5th edition of Marzanna Run in Kraków. And that is how running became my incurable disease...
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