FOREWORD

End of September

The garden flowers are still blooming in the valley,
The poplars are still green outside the window...

(Petőfi)

The slowly falling leaves can send us a message of passing, but from another angle, the end of September can also bring us our most beautiful runs. Laughing, jogging, recharging? What is recreation but a way of exercising and shaking up our body and soul, our health. On your feet, Hungarian!

Perhaps this was also the message of the charity run, which at the end of September this year, in connection with the Petőfi Memorial Year, put the joy of movement under the banner of the treadmill, alongside the message of national unity. I myself was one of the organisers of the 500-kilometre run, which started in Petőfi's hometown of Kiskőrös and ended in the park of Teleki Castle in Kolto, where the poet spent his honeymoon.

A handful of the team undertook to run the distance through ditches and bushes, stopping off at several children's homes in the Partium region to donate sports shoes. They believe that exercise is good not only for the body but also for the soul, that running shoes are a way of coping with the spirit. During the ride, while refreshing the runners, I heard them say to each other several times that we are nobodies together. And that means, no matter what position you hold, what job you have, what standard of living you live, you are nobody in a long distance run. Everyone is hurting the same, everyone is struggling the same. You are nobody so that you can become somebody at the end of the journey. And everyone can do that too, you just have to believe it, put on your running shoes and do the first mile. The rest almost comes naturally.

Zsolt Bartha,
BME Centre for Physical Education,
Deputy Director,
KERT Budapest Creative Group Leader