why i run – Not a Jogger

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.

Play Misty For Me

I get excited when the overnight temperature on the weather app drops to single figures, but the days are still warm. On a clear night, mist will rise from the river and spread its cold fingers over the water meadows, leaving wisps of cloud floating over the lake. As the first rays of sun peep over the horizon, the mist disappears like a magic trick.

Sunrise was at 6:36am, and I didn’t want to run in the dark, but I did want to be by the river at first light. I set my alarm for 5:35am. I know it’s mad, but this doesn’t feel early any more. In lockdown, I became obsessed with running before anyone else was up, and as the days got longer, my alarms got earlier.

I had a coffee but didn’t eat breakfast. I did my usual activation exercises. Ten years ago I would have thought this too was mad: who would sacrifice 30 minutes of sleep for a coffee and some squats? But ten years ago I could have sprinted in heels. Now I have to warm up just to walk downstairs.

I jogged through the estate in the twilight, crossing the railway tracks and the weir before I saw another person. Three women in hijabs, who I sometimes see at this hour, said good morning as they ran past me on the bridge.

Taking the river path, I could feel the mist cold in my nostrils, and damp on my arms and legs. Over the footbridge and into Ferry Meadows, the sun was up and the pale light turned briefly orange. Over the lake, the sky was settling into blue, and terns wheeled and skimmed the surface. A heron sat hunched on a buoy in the middle of the lake and invisible fish rippled the water from below.

I felt completely free to enjoy this run. It’s the second Friday after school started, my parents are away, I don’t have to work, and it’s the first Friday in a few months where I can put myself first. I didn’t have to do the school drop off. I didn’t have to run fast, or far. Still, I had a goal. Every run has a purpose. Sometimes you set it, sometimes it’s set for you, and sometimes you learn it afterwards.

Today, I ran to drink in the beauty. I don’t care if this sounds naff because it isn’t. I learned that in lockdown too.

Why I run (An Italian Perspective)

By Brian:

Why do I run? This is a question that would be quite difficult to answer because it has now become something I just do, like why most people watch TV. They come home, sit on the sofa and switch on the TV, there’s no thought process to it, they just do it because that’s what you do when you come home from work. It’s the same for me with running. Although I love getting outdoors, I don’t take great pleasure whilst actually running unless, perversely, it’s in heavy rain. I always feel great afterwards though, which is probably the point; I think this feeling could also be due to having a nice hot shower and the guilt-free eating and drinking that ensues.

When I was younger I was very active, in addition to eating and drinking: football, walking, tennis and martial arts were all a part of my daily routine, but then I moved to London and I stopped doing everything, except the eating and drinking, which at the time were definitely not guilt-free. However that was 15 years ago, and I now live surrounded by the awesome beauty of Italian Alps.

I eventually got my act together and started running.

So, why did I start running? Now, that’s an easier question to answer. I started just over three years ago due to a personal crisis, which I won’t go into here. This compelled me to get out of the house, thus giving me an opportunity to try and resolve certain problems and also fantasise about how I would spend that lottery win (I still do this now as I never listen to music while running). In sorting out my head it helped me tremendously, especially when I started shedding weight, I lost about 9kg in two/three months; it was nice to feel svelte again.

My running schedule is very regular (four or five times a week), but lacks focus due to the fact that I’ve never entered any races, a situation I hope to change next year. I have three main routes that I use, well I say routes, they’re all along the same cycle path which follows the River Adige. The distances I run are: 8k (when I’m tired), 11k (my regular distance) and 14k (my weekly long run). I can’t tell you my personal bests for each distance because I’ve never done a race and Notajogger reckons training doesn’t count. However, I can say that if I entered a 10k race, I would expect a sub-42min-race and my target would be 40 min.

For those who may be interested, here are my monthly distances and times for the last 6 months:

November:	85.0 km	6:14:23
October:	150.0 km	10:58:05
September:	176.0 km	12:56:34
August:	139.0 km	10:33:30
July:	177.0 km	13:07:23
June:	180.0 km	13:19:06

The distances usually drop off during the late-summer due to the ridiculous heat in Italy and I also visit the UK, where I mainly do forest runs and I don’t keep an accurate log of distances run.

Next time I hope to take you on a run down the River Adige with me.