Happily Exhausted

"Soon I was running across the moor to a distant part of the coast of Kintyre . . . I felt I was running back to all the primitive joy that my season had destroyed . . . The gulls were crying overhead and a herd of wild goats were silhouetted against the headland. I could barely distinguish slippery rock from heathery turf or bog, yet my feet did not slip or grow weary now -- they had new life and confidence. I ran in a frenzy of speeds, drawn on by an unseen force. The sun sank, setting the forest ablaze, and turning the sky to dull smoke. Then tiredness came on and . . . I rolled down a heather topped bank and lay there happily exhausted."

Roger Bannister