Good Days – Not a Jogger

Clipston Trail Half Marathon

“How’s your training going?” A coach asked me in the gym. I was confused – what training? Am I supposed to be training for something? Because… I haven’t been. My running is the same every week: two or three short runs and one long run. Sometimes I run up some hills, occasionally (very occasionally) I run a bit faster.

I haven’t been training because I haven’t been racing. I ran the St Neots half marathon in November 2024 and haven’t put on a club vest since. I really don’t miss it but I don’t want to feel like I’ve given up for ever, so I signed up for my annual race. The Clipston Trail Half’s description was perfect: ”run on trails across beautiful countryside”. Stiles, fields, views, hills, fewer than 100 entrants, no plastic waste, no time cut-off. My kind of race.

I ran with my brother-in-law, Lee, while my sister Liz did the five mile race. Half way through the run I was stood waiting for Lee to reappear after a trailside wee and a passing runner kindly asked if I was ok. Yes, I said, I’m just waiting for my… friend. I never thought about how weird it is to say “brother-in-law” to a total stranger. Especially when the brother-in-law isn’t present.

These are the kind of thoughts that have time to pass through a person’s head when they’re not worrying about how fast they are running. The week before the race, my friend Lee got injured, and I caught a cold. We should really have dropped out, but we agreed to “take it easy” instead. In my head this would be 9 minute miles, but the hills and my heart rate called for much slower, so we finished in 2 hour 20. The remarkable thing about this is not that it’s my slowest half, but that I didn’t even look at my watch until we were a mile away from the finish.

Running a race for the experience, rather than the time, is not something I have done often. Even if I’ve said I “just want to enjoy it” I’ve always had a secret goal. Not having one turns the race back into a run. It’s even allowed to be fun. We chatted. We walked. When a marshal said “don’t miss the view”, we really looked at it. I took pictures. I spotted birds. I ate two flapjacks and two gels and emptied my water bottle.

After the first hill there is a narrow footpath section where runners are forced to run in single file for half a mile. In any other race I would be frustrated to be stuck in a queue early on, so it felt good to remember all the times I’ve felt like that before and realise that this time I didn’t care. At mile four we settled in behind a trio of runners and, instead of wondering whether we could overtake them, I wondered whether we could keep them in front of us for the rest of the race.

It was a gorgeous race. The course is out and back with a couple of different loops and constant rolling hills (1,000 ft over the 13.1 miles) to keep it varied. The footpaths were dry and mostly gravel, firm grass or well worn single tracks, with only two ankle-breaking sections. The first was a deceptively beautiful wide path curving steeply down a hill which had been secretly churned up by horses and baked solid beneath a sward of grass. The second one we were warned about in the pre-race briefing: two ploughed fields in the final mile.

Knowing that you will have to walk in the final mile is enough to put anyone off aiming for a “good” time in a race. Even I would hesitate to call trudging up a hill of loose soil my idea of a “good time”. But after the furrows of doom there was a downhill of joy, and Lee leapt like a salmon for the photographer while I beamed in genuine delight. At the finish, people clapped like they knew us, and the Race Director greeted every finisher with a medal and a personal congratulations.

Walking back to the car with a flushed face and a paper plate of cakes I realised: this is the race I have been training for.

Sunday, 27 April 2025

Making my coffee in the silent kitchen at 5am, I lean down to find out the colour of the dawn under the lowered blind: grey. Relief. I can take my time. No need to rush through toast and skip the wordle to make it out in time to see the sunrise.

Why get up so early if the sun isn’t even out? Another person might ask.

My car is first to the layby, and will still be there alone when I finish my run. Before crossing the road to the footpath, I stand to watch the trees hover in the mist at the bottom of the valley, and listen to the skylarks. The sky is grey, but the pearly grey of a shell, lit by the sun. High overhead, fishscales of cloud are separating to reveal pale blue above.

I start my watch but not my podcast. Begin running. In Old Sulehay Wood, I hear a garden warbler and a chaffinch singing from the dark canopy over the path. I run up the hill and pause at the top to hear the sawing of a great tit and piping of a thrush. I walk between the two giant horse-chestnuts on either side of the path. Their white candle blossoms are the height of praying hands. I hold still for a minute, watching for movement. I don’t want to move on.

At the far edge of the woods, there is a gate marked “Private” leading to a field of waist high grass. Walking up to it, I surprise two young deer and they bound and leap away in an S-shaped path. I turn back to the trail and then right onto Sulehay Road. A car pulls into a driveway opposite and I hear a peacock calling in the garden behind a grand stone archway. At the junction with Kings Cliffe Road, I finally turn on my podcast, ready for the company.

This part of the run is the dullest, but a road with no cars is always a gift. I drift into the centre of the tarmac and think about my legs landing and pushing and lifting and falling. I pick up my feet. I drop my shoulders. I turn left onto the stony trail along the edge of Rockingham Forest Park.

There is an old quarry off the east side of the track, its scrapes and scrub made mysterious by the pearly light. May blossom is beginning to froth at its edges, pushing through the fence. I run slowly with a deer trotting ahead of me, unbothered. Two swans whomp overhead and the deer disappears into the undergrowth. I rattle down the hill through Great Morton Sale over loose gravel. Stop to catch my breath at the bridge and look back at the path, a brown swoop of carpet framed by tall beeches like the nave of a cathedral. Blackbird songs echo through the trees.

Emerging again from the woods, I take the winding road to Apethorpe, turning left at the signpost before the village. The rolling fields are hazy and muted. No chill in the air but no warmth either. Pheasants, linnets, yellowhammers, goldfinches. A buzzard. Kites. Rooks. On the lane out of Woodnewton, I stop to watch the Willow Brook gurgle and hear a cuckoo calling. Low and insistent. A distant metronome.

In Fotheringhay, I pass a perfect cottage with clematis, apple blossom, and a cherry tree splashing pink flowers over its garden wall onto the pavement. I catch the scent of wisteria from walls warming up in the first rays of the sun. The occasional daffodil beams from roadside verges. Cow parsley is not fully out yet – low and timid after little rain.

Past the church, I turn to cross the brook a second time, to run up the long, straight road up to Nassington and Yarwell, and back to the car. A dog barks to my left – an alsatian straining at its lead. I push on, head down, ready to get home. A van beeps as it passes me, speeding past too close. I see myself from the outside, suddenly aware of the effort it takes to pull each foot from the floor. I walk the final hill.

The car door closed, I sit quietly, maybe not yet ready to leave. As I put the key in the ignition, a whitethroat lands on the hedge opposite. 8:30am. In London, elite women are beginning their marathon. Other people are waking up. Just getting in. Sleeping in.

Not me.

More than a race

Two weeks ago, for the first time in 18 months, I pinned on a race bib. I ran the St Neots half marathon and it reminded me that, despite what we see and share online, running isn’t really about racing. I started running to get fit and it took me six years to enter a race. When I ran, I ran alone. It didn’t occur to me that I might want to run *with* other people, let alone against them.

In the year 2000 I was living in Cambridge, and my friend Caroline talked me into joining weekly runs with the Hash House Harriers. It was fun, and I realised that a) I enjoyed the running much more than the drinking, and b) I was definitely a front-runner keen to sniff out the route, and not a back-of-the-pack conversationalist.

My first race was the Grunty Fen half marathon. I can’t remember if I did any training – doubtful – but thanks to the internet (yes, it existed then) the results are online and I can tell you that I finished in 1:53:45. The race was in September and it was very hot and extremely flat. There was no shade and few spectators. At one point there was a slight slope and everyone started complaining about “the hill”.

One race down, I obviously entered the London marathon (..a tale as old as time..). I applied for a charity place and, as soon as I’d raised the money, got a stress fracture in my foot from wearing new trainers on my first 20 mile run (..tune as old as song..).

Have I learned anything in the past thirty years? I was pondering this on the way to St Neots. I’ve spent the past 18 months dealing with persistent knee /foot issues. With physio exercises and strength training, I’ve kept them at bay and kept running, but I haven’t managed to do “proper” (as in high mileage) training.

What I did manage was 2-3 easy runs, plus a long run at the weekend. I tried a few speed sessions, but struggled to find a pace and stick to it. My splits were all over the place, my lungs feeling like they were going to burst out of my chest, knees creaking scarily for days afterwards. For the last few weeks I dropped the speed and just tried to include some half marathon pace miles in one run a week. But what was half marathon pace? It started at 7:45 minutes a mile, then dropped to 8s, to 8:30s, then to… whatever I could manage that day.

Like the peaks and troughs of my low mileage progress chart on strava, St Neots half is described as “slightly undulating”. That’s one of the reasons I love it. This was my third – and slowest – dash around the country roads around Abbotsley village and a reminder that there are enough slopes to keep it interesting, but not too many to make it hard.

I finished the race in 1:41:56. A whole 13.1 miles at 7:45 pace. I was amazed! On the day it felt controlled, like I was holding back for the first five, pushing for the next four, and only feeling the strain in the final four. My new carbon plate shoes (yes I caved) helped in the race and with recovery. I felt really strong on the uphills, which I’m putting down to squats and deadlifts, and the last four miles of St Neots are (very slightly) downhill which makes it easier for the mind if not actually for the legs.

Even though I was doing the race for fun, and time wasn’t important, I felt nervous on the way to St Neots. Why was I worried when nothing was at stake? I have been thinking about this. My friend Laura was running too, and also feeling a bit nervous despite not aiming for a fast time (for her).

No matter what your goal, there is so much that is stressful about a race: eating at the right time, drinking enough but not too much, going to the toilet, wearing the right clothes. Getting these things right is hard enough, then you have to run the thing.

But once the race is underway, all there’s left to do is run. Running doesn’t have to be about racing, but racing is always just running. And running is the same as it’s always been: one foot in front of the other, cold air, warm breath, blue sky, green fields. Breathe in, breathe out. Same as it ever was.

Marking the equinox

Last Sunday was the autumnal equinox. A moment of uneasy equilibrium, when day and night briefly share 12 hours before daylight tumbles towards the winter solstice. I meant to go for a run, and pay special attention to the sunrise or sunset. To mark the moment with pictures, maybe write about it. I didn’t remember. I did run but it was raining and, behind the clouds, the sun was just an assumption.

This morning while I drank my pre-run coffee I read about the equinox. I learned about the “solar terminator” – the edge between night and day – that separates the part of the earth experiencing darkness from that experiencing daylight. A circle constantly rotating around the earth’s surface, twice a day, moving at 463 metres per second. At the equinox, it moves around the globe like a spinning line of longitude – bringing darkness on one side, and light on the other.

In spring and autumn, at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, both poles see the sun, and both northern and southern hemispheres share the light equally. Afterwards, one’s loss is the other’s gain.

The weeks around the equinox are a dream time for running. Every pre- or post-work run catches a sunrise or sunset. One wet evening I chanced on a rainbow in the eastern sky, the nearby clouds lit purple. But really I’m a sunrise person. In between some biblical rain, this month I’ve seen the mist rise from the River Ouse over York Minster, caught the first light of the sun turning a gate into a magic portal, and gazed on ghost trees in the fog over flooded fields.

At sunrise, I have the paths to myself. I like to run along the river, or in the woods. The colder nights and still warm days mean that vapour rises from the water and floats among the trees. The grass is soaking, and fences drip with tiny golden orbs of dew. In the city, the neon lights of the Esso garage are briefly a fairground ride against the technicolour sky.

This morning I remembered the Equinox – a week late, but does it matter? The sun rose today at 7am, and will set at 6:41pm. The nights are being drawn in for us in the northern hemisphere, whilst the days loosen their grip, extending their warm grasp southwards.

At the gate to Old Sulehay woods, the fog was lying over flooded fields, with a sunrise lightshow peaking high above. To the south of the path, the meadow was waist high with grasses lit ochre, mist blurring the trees and bringing everything closer, nearer. I took some pictures and they are spectacular but they don’t contain it. The sounds of birds rustling and settling and jostling the leaves. The distant cars that never appear. The tiny lights of a farmhouse on the horizon.

In the woods, the lightshow is reduced to a strip of gold and blue overhead, with clouds looming pink in the west over the horse chestnut trees. A carpet of curling leaves and conkers litter the top of the hill. It is darker here, and a tiny bit creepy. I take my earbuds out so that I can hear the birds, but also the sound of anyone approaching. Back on the road, the sun has risen and drifts of roadside weeds burn orange against the fields. No interesting birds today, just pigeons and magpies, starlings. A few pheasants.

No hares in the fields, but plenty of deer. I run a couple of miles along the road to Kings Cliffe, stopping for a wee behind a gate. Over 11 miles, I don’t see any people. A few cars, but no cyclists, runners or dog walkers. Everyone is at home, in bed or inside, enjoying the warmth. Maybe putting the heating on for the first time. Maybe preparing to go out later, when I will be at home warming up and hiding inside.

This summer, on holiday in Sardinia, I took a video of a sunrise over the sea as it lapped against a ruined tower. When I uploaded it, instagram asked me if I wanted to flag it as AI. At dawn, the world looks so perfect that it doesn’t seem possible, or real. Mid-way through the clip, a tiny mosquito buzzes across the screen on its way to biting my arm in three places.

A perfect ten

Ten miles is the perfect long run. Throughout a year of being injured, it has floated in my mind, a persistent goal. Over this year I’ve let go of caring about being fast, or entering races. But I haven’t let go of this dream: a ten mile weekend run.

In ten miles you can achieve something. You can get out of your local area, and maybe even back again. You can get tired, and pull through it. You can get seriously high on endorphins. It’s a long run you don’t need to plan for – if you forget to take food or water you can refuel at the end and still feel ok for the day. But it’s also far enough to make you properly hungry and thirsty. To remind you you’re alive.

I have run a couple of ten mile races and, as a race, it’s a treat as well. A ten mile race is a half marathon that takes you gently by the shoulders and says “hey, it’s ok, just for today we don’t need to run the last 5k”.

The last time I ran that far was back in November 2023, splashing along a grassy path that unexpected became a freezing stream, in the fields west of Stamford. Back then I thought my running was on the up, so I’m nervous to write this. But I don’t need my running to be on the up any more.

Today I ran ten miles. It was only half of my friend Laura’s 20 mile run, but I didn’t feel I was missing out. I felt only joy to be running 10, and an equal joy that I didn’t have to go any further.

It’s marathon season now, with Brighton tomorrow kicking off the big UK spring marathons. I gave up my place at the (new) Norfolk marathon back in January but I don’t feel envy for anyone running one this month.

I am truly happy with where I am. Today’s run was a ten.

Run early, and the day is Thine

At St Guthlac’s church in Market Deeping, a pair of sundials are built into the walls of the bell tower. The one on the south-eastern wall says, “The day is Thine”, and measures out the hours from five am. On the north-western face, its twin warns, “The Night cometh”, and marks the few daylight hours from four pm.

I walked past the church this Sunday in the afternoon gloom and smiled, thinking about my run that morning. It was the day the clocks went back, so waking up at 5am to eat breakfast before leaving the house at 6:30am was really waking up at 6am – practically a lie-in for me.

Contemplating where to run, I couldn’t face any route from my house. They are all worn out with overuse, even in their autumn colours. So I cycled west to Nene Park, watching the full moon descend into pink clouds. At the lake, I stopped to take photos of the cormorant tree, surrounded by circling rooks. Mist spread from the river as I crossed Milton Ferry Bridge, and the first rays of sun peered over my shoulder.

I locked my bike to a post at the top of Ferry Hill, and stuffed my coat into the pannier. I jogged slowly down the hill to Castor village, with the sun lighting the treetops bronze and gold above the green. On the road from Ailsworth to Helpston the ploughed fields were flat and brown – devoid of birds and life – but the roadside trees glowed in the morning light. At the edge of Castor Hanglands, I caught a glimpse of a deer as it pranced away from me into the woods.

I chose this route so that I could run along my favourite bend in the road. I can’t remember when I was there last; probably spring. Time telescopes. A Sunday run from 2021 could be yesterday – familiar but strange, with odd things to notice: a gate standing alone with no fence around it; a sign warning that “deer management is in progress”. Last Sunday I ran past a tree with four red kites in it, perched like ancient kings on their wooden throne.

If you run the same route every day, your brain doesn’t see it – it mostly fills it in from memory. It takes a new scene to feel new things, to make new pathways in your mind. The day is Thine. The Night cometh.

Three minutes of nirvana in a business park

It’s midsummer and I’m jogging eastwards on the cycle path that runs between Lynch Wood business park and the Oundle Road. I’m sweating and tired from five miles of running. 22 degrees at 7am, the sun is high above the treetops already, and there’s only a hint of freshness in the air to remind me it’s early morning.

I turn the corner onto the shaded path. On the left, office buildings are hidden behind trees planted 35 summers ago. To the right an occasional car can be heard, but not seen, passing on the A605. The hawthorn hedge is bursting with umbellifers after a rainy spring. Even the tarmac is a pattern of leaves: the penumbra of plane, hazel and ash. The leaf shadows shift and move in the light, blue and gold against the grey. I slow down, and move to the right, as a man passes with a loping dog.

Alone now, my jog drops into a walk. The shadows deepen into forest on either side of the path, and I shade my eyes with my hand against the sun. I drink it in. Pollen and insects loop around in the breeze, backlit gold on dark green. A bee hangs in the air, a still point as I move past, wings beating furiously to hold it in place.

Ten metres ahead, a muntjac pushes through a gap in the hedge on my right, turning its head to look back at me. It hesitates, deciding whether to push back through. Instead it trots ahead, keeping to the path. I try to keep pace, to keep it in sight between patches of sunlight. After a few seconds it shimmies through a different gap in the hawthorn and off towards the road.

Uplifted, I start to run again. Slow. Aware of the sound of my breath and the brush of air on my arms as they move. I turn back to check for movement: humans, dogs, deer. Looking west, the light shifts into the harsh glare of summer. Leaves lie flat against the sky, and I’m aware of how weary I am. How much I don’t want to get home, to the heat, and all the work I haven’t done.

The end of the path approaches. The avenue of trees opens into a concrete junction. A roundabout, bollards, road signs, kerbs. A mock-tudor office block. For a few minutes, nature took over the suburbs, and joy pushed up through cracks in the concrete.

Staying in the moment

My daughter is nine, and developing a nice sideline in life coaching. On Thursday night when I was fretting about work while making the dinner she said “worry about work when you’re at work” and it worked. I did stop worrying. One of the biggest challenges of being a parent – for me at least – is staying in the moment. There are so many distractions, from existential worries to whatsapp alerts. I know that this time is precious. Soon, she’ll be a teenager and won’t want to talk to me for hours at 9pm, and then she’ll have a phone and I won’t want her to be on it.

My aim for today’s run was to stay in the moment: to enjoy being outside on this cold and clear January day. I did enjoy it, but not in the mindful way I had hoped for. My feet were moving calmly, but my brain was running everywhere. Remembering something I said in a meeting that I wished I hadn’t, worrying what trainers to wear at the race I’m doing on Sunday, wondering if I needed to get dad something else for his birthday.

Occasionally I’d stop to walk and find that my mind cleared. The constant beat of questions and worries stopped and I would notice the gutter of ice at the edge of the road, a golden plover in a field, or the fingers of an oak branching into the blue sky.

After my run I swam a few lengths in the swimming pool at the gym. It was nearly lunchtime and very quiet. Shafts of sunlight rippled through the end of the empty fast lane and I ducked in to bask in the glow, eyes closed. I was happy and I can’t remember what I was thinking about. Maybe summer. Maybe nothing.

I used to be scared of the wind

When I was 8 years old, I was so scared of the wind that I got into a stranger’s car and asked him to drive me home, just to get out of it.

Every morning before school, I would open the curtains to see if leaves or rubbish were being blown along the street. If I could hear the howl of the wind in the chimney, my throat would tighten and my stomach would begin to churn. “I feel sick”, I would say, and mum would let me stay at home. Why didn’t she make me go to school? Mr Leroyd, my teacher, had told her that 8 year olds often develop sudden phobias which go away if they are ignored, so that’s what my parents did.

I don’t remember what happened when I got out of the stranger’s car when it pulled up to our kerb, but I do know that the man took me to our door and spoke to my mum. It makes sense that letting me stay at home to watch tv was preferable to that.

It’s been windy this week, and I have hated it. I had to get the train to London on three of the days, which meant cycling against the wind to the station for the first time in weeks. My knees are creaking as a result and, today, I cycled so slowly back from the supermarket that I nearly fell off my bike. It’s a short, flat ride.

Running in the wind isn’t as hard as cycling. Today, on my day off, I cycled to the gym (why do I hate myself?) so that I could go for a cross-country run. On the bike, the wind was grim. On foot, it was fine. Refreshing, even. I ran from Thorpe Wood, up Ferry Hill and out towards Marholm, then across the public footpath which skirts the Milton Estate to Castor Hanglands and back through Ailsworth and Castor. I love this route in every season. It’s high ground (for round here), so even at its muddiest it’s still a pleasure to run.

The path goes through farmlands and woodlands. Flocks of linnets rose and crossed my path from field to field. A single skylark struggled against a gust, eager to get away from me. Approaching the crossways of two footpaths, the windsock that marks the private air field was being blown horizontal. A long sward of clipped green grass sat temptingly behind the PRIVATE sign. I always think that this airstrip would be a great place to do interval training, though someone would probably shoot me for it.

Back on the Helpston Road, a pheasant scooted across my path, backlit by a weak winter sun. A constant comb of light, a few shafts breaking through the clouds, hovered in the eastern sky. As I approached Ailsworth I slowed to a walk to get my heart rate down, the remains of November’s covid still lurking in my lungs. Before the A47 bridge, birds of prey circled concentrically: red kites on the left, a buzzard on the right.

I was surprised by the January colours on this run. I was slow, and had lots of time to look at the landscape. The ploughed fields looked purple, but shards of hay glowed orange in the furrows. So often, colours seen at a glance reveal themselves to be two quite different ones, in close up.

This week I went to a training session that’s been on my mind. It was on polarity thinking, something that can be used for ongoing problems that have two correct answers which are interdependent (eg, self and others; continuity and change). There are upsides and downsides for each pole, and the aim of polarity thinking is to stay in the upsides of both poles, without sinking into the downs.

As I was running, I was thinking about being scared of the wind. Was it the wind that was frightening, or its effect: how it made me feel? The swirl and howl of a gale raised a panic in me that I couldn’t deal with. Indoors was safety from that. Outdoors was risk. I’m not frightened of the wind any more, but I am scared of heights, stairs that you can see through, and really big dogs. Staying inside my house would keep me safe from all of those, but stop me from doing almost anything. You never know when an architect is going to put one of those staircases in.

2023 in running: a miserable and magical year

It’s been a funny old year. But haven’t they all been, lately? A journalist asked for some stats at work the other day and I had to write an email justifying why no two years are really comparable and then I stopped and thought: why am I doing this? Of course you can’t compare 2020 to 2021 to 2022. We’re living through a series of crises.

It has not been a vintage running year for me. I picked up a calf injury by pushing too hard in a 30k race in February, deferred my Brighton marathon place, trained fitfully over a hot summer, ran the Rutland marathon and did not enjoy it, then finally got Covid and missed the beginning of the cross-country season. My annual mileage is set to be my lowest for many years.

But, surprise! I still love running. When I have managed to get out for a run – even (especially?) the ones where I walked – I’ve loved it more than ever. The injury and Covid were rotten, but they made me appreciate running more. I missed being outside, covering ten miles with ease, and getting out of my head as well as the house.

I went part-time (if 4 days a week with some work on fridays really counts as part-time, which I would argue it does not) in March, with the intention of doing some creative writing on my day off. I’ve found it hard. Not working quite so much has been great, but it turns out that creativity is not a tap I can just turn on when I have a spare few hours. Also, there are a whole heap of other things I want to do with six hours to myself, and running is high on the list.

My best runs this year have been Friday morning runs. Some of them with Lazy Girl Laura, but most of them alone. Does running count as being creative? Maybe not, but it definitely does count as beautiful. I’ve shared some of my favourite running photos from the year in this blog. You can’t see me in any of the pictures, but I was there.