Tor Rønnow

6 Star Finisher 7 Continents Finisher 75 Marathon countries Author of best-seller running book Mountain hiker Off-piste alpine skier Chess player

Climbing ladders

Oh well.. I guess I have been quite “down” for a while, now it is time to climb up again. Weather shifts, psychology shifts. We are here to experience these shifts, we are not the shifts themselves.. even though it feels like it at times. If you feel bad at mood, life is bad. Wrong. It is your feelings about it. Feelings change over time.

Unlike (so many) others I do not pretend and unlike (so many) others I confront stuff even when it may have direct negative impact on myself. I believe it brings a better result overall. Confrontation is the process where you find out what is real and what isnt. Find out who your real friends are, find out who really loves you, find out what you really love yourself. Living a fake life based on lies and withheld truths is for the imbeciles.

I prefer reality on the rocks – not a superficial and manipulated sugerdrink for babies. And lets face it: real reality just feels like plain crap at times. Sometimes we are just very sad and unhappy, each for our reasons. This is a trivial fact – but it is still, in 2010, kind of taboo to admit it. Sometimes, everything just really sucks.

This is when we need the ability to analyse and evaluate, to choose new paths, to give ourselves rebirth and to rise from the burned pasts like the Phoenix bird. This is when we need to climb the ladders in our internal psychology. This is when we need others and perhaps something. Something to do, something to believe in, something to explore. I have many “somethings” and running is for sure one of them. Chess, music and travels are others. Indeed, I could live entire lives in each of my many “somethings”.

But as for now there is only this and one life. It is time to smile again and to seek stuff and to be with the loved ones. Time to climb those ladders. Watch out 😉

Kind of Dark

I see and speak from a point you will never understand. I see and speak with hinsights you should be happy not to ever know. I see and speak from the dark.

Let me give you a glimse. Aged 27 my mother commited suicide. I was 3 years old. Turbulent times followed to put it mildly, as this crime left my father and the rest of my family devastated, no wonder. Aged 7, I witnessed the death struggle of my father, dying 31 years old to a heart condition. This loss came as no surprise, I had “seen” it happen weeks in advance. It was a logical consequence of events. I was “deported” to a loveless fate at a hostfamily in another part of the country and this misery went on for 5 years. Then came almost 7 years on a boarding school, a times a very rough affair with both physical and mental abuses, not in the sexual sense, but still. It wasnt too easy.

All these years I had only one person left to bury – my beloved grandmother. It is now two years ago that I did. I dont think anyone can grasp the consequences of all this, of being the last in the entire family tree. Grasp what kind of feelings I have dealt with. Grasp the enormity of being totally alone in the world. Historically, it can be compared to the survivors of World War II, many of these, by the way, commiting suicide by the burden of their losses. But I hate the concept of being a victim and I ask for no mercy. I just find myself on a special path and find it hard to take many of the “dramas” of the ordinary man too seriously. I am on another scale.

So why live ? It is indeed a very relevant question ! Answers… we all have our own. The interesting thing is whether we have constructed our opinions ourselves or just live by the conventions, by the expectations of our family and partners, and whether we have the courage to live and act accordingly to who we really are and what we really feel. Let me tell you this: everything else is absurd ! You will be under ground soon enough.

Yes, so why not live ? Why not take the risk of being yourself and to accept the consequences. Why not address the important issues in your life and leave the less important behind. Living by fear is a waste of time and life… and we are only here for such a short time anyways. So go for the things you love ! Because love is the light in the dark, and there are so many things to love indeed. For me, running is one of them.

202 marathons and still a freshman

I guess I have done a few marathons here and there, been around. However, there are still lots of races on the TO-DO list, lots of new experiences ahead, lots of new friends out there, lots of excitement and challenges in the years to come. I could even begin to do speed work and such stuff, examining some of the parameters that I have down-prioritized by large until now (for good reasons). There is lots of unfinished business.

The latter has become quite clear to me in the fascinating process of writing my first book “ELSK AT LØBE – med maratonbogen” (in english: “RUN TO LOVE – with the maraton book”),

… the book being ready for presale e.g. here.

I have the pleasure of co-authoring this book with one of the most renowed scientists worldwide in the area of human excercise, the danish professor Bente Klarlund Pedersen. We are very excited about the outcome: it is a rich, beautiful, inspirering and scientific book for everyone interested in running, full of insights and stuff you can actually use, stuff that will evolve and transform you ! Yes, sorry for being a bit self-indulgent.. but hey, its my first book, dude, and I quite proud about it. Cheer a bit with me.

Myself.. I have learned TONS of stuff about my own running… and wrong-doings. OMG.. I have made some pretty bad mistakes over the years, I realize that now. So yes, even after 202 marathons… one can feel pretty fresh and ignorant. But now I know where and how to wise up and I look forward to attack some of the goals I have set for myself. I’ll get back to those another time.