Runner's high (Mike Spino, 1971)

[With] my first step I felt lighter and looser than ever before. My shirt clung to me, and I felt like a skeleton flying through a wind tunnel. My times at the mile were so fast that I almost felt like I was cheating. It was like getting a new body that no-one else had heard about. My mind was so crystal clear that I could have held a conversation. The only sensation was the rhythm and the beat, all perfectly natural, all and everything and everything part of everything else ... distance, time, motion were all one. There were myself, the cement, a vague feeling of legs, and the coming dusk. I tore on. I could have run and run. Perhaps I had experienced a physiological change, but whatever, it was magic. I came to the side of the road and cried tears of joy and sorrow. Joy for being alive; sorrow for a vague feeling of temporalness, and a knowledge of the impossibility of giving this experience to anyone.

Mike Spino (1971) 'Running as a spiritual experience', in J. Scott (Ed.), The Athletic Revoltion (p. 222) New York, Free Press.