Running in Parc Guell on a September evening

My head was spinning from staring at the computer screen all day, hunched up at my desk. I hadn't been for a run in about two weeks, and although I had been out for a small trek in the hills a few days earlier, I obviously hadn't got the need to do exercise out of my system. I overcame the temptation to stay at home sprawled on my bed and set out to Parc Guell. After a good 15-minute walk uphill from Gracia, I started running. The steep start that I usually conquered with clenched teeth didn't seem so bad that day, and I was (what at least felt like) speeding past rambling tourists and the occasional jogger with surprising ease. I ran and ran until it felt like it was the only thing I could do, there was no option, there were no brakes, only accelaration, accelaration, accelaration...I ran up to the viewpoint at the top of the park, passing the 90-something-year-old man I had once met with Leandro (I greeted him with a rushed "buenas tardes"), explored a new path that eventually led me to a dead end, kept running, running, running...and when I finally stopped running, going downhill, the pink clouds grinning at me from above La Sagrada Familia...the whole city was spinning, the clouds were all too pink, the Gaudian swirls too organic and innate to the landscape, the air too fresh to belong to the city...I couldn't breathe but I was breathing. I had to check my heart was still beating...It was, but I couldn't hear it. My chest felt like after I had run a race, pushed myself, done my best and won. My feet took me down the hill, down towards Gracia, guiding me home. It's a good thing they did because I was in such a state of euphoria that I wouldn't have known where to go. And I got home and my head was still spinning...