Run
I started running in Berlin whilst in self-isolation. I decided to slip out in the early morning to exercise before people were around en masse. I’ve never been a runner, well not a distance runner. A distance in this instance means more than 100 metres. Cycling has been much more my thing, mostly leisurely. Team sports had interested me for a time and on reflection perhaps that was to do with the sharing of the exercise as opposed to the doing all of it. Running was a surprise. I say running it is more akin to jogging, a lighter less strenuous version.
I was uncannily quick as a moon faced seven year old. I unexpectedly won four out five annual sports day sprints up until the age of 12. No one was more surprised than me. It had some kudos back then, being the fastest runner. It didn’t last, teenage ambivalence and rapid growth spurts amongst others evaporated my super powers. Those temporary powers had never extended to distance. Inadvertently for a short time I was considered a potential all round athlete in the making.
As part of a dreaded school cross-country run in Cardiff I spotted an opportunity to shave a few miles off the route. As I jogged gingerly back towards school alone I was spotted by Mr Lewis, the games teacher, jogging to meet the pack. Impressed with my apparent progress he asked me to keep up with him as he blazed across a field on route to the schoolyard. With lung bursting gulps and spluttered dignity I did my best to maintain the ruse and got myself selected for a South Wales cross country event. It became one of my first experiences of imposter syndrome. I didn’t represent the school again. Not at running.
These memories flood back as I head outside early doors and into the morning chill. I reset my Casio stopwatch and begin those first strides down Bailey Street. The decline adds welcome momentum before I attempt to cruise effortlessly through the city centre towards the river. Lockdown has cleansed the streets of early commuters. There are occasional wanderers, undoubtedly key working in some shape or form and my aim is to maintain an impression of stealth.
Along the river path is the place where the cadence regulates. Feeling out the springs in my feet I attempt to place them precisely, leading with my chest and calmly breathing. This breathe that ignores the rapid rhythm of the heart is the most difficult to master. For some reason I imagine circular breathing as if I played a wind or brass instrument. I haven’t found the exact score or harmony as yet despite my orchestral goal setting. With the pace set, the mind begins to free itself and I am in full motion heading east and towards the first glimmers of the rising sun. It sounds so simple. It is. It isn’t.
How can this be good for you? When my feet ache and my heart thunders. How can this motion, twice as fast as walking and half as slow as cycling, be healthy when the fibres in my body seem to plea for recalibration? Yet once started stopping never seems to be an option, the pain of defeat weighs heavier than that of completion.
At the end of my longest run, a 10K with hills and spills, I thought of Mr Lewis and the cheating little fucker that I was. I think of his advice in focusing on the heels of the runner in front. I imagine him running there in front of me. At some point I wanted to shout ‘Mr Lewis stop! I can’t do this’… but then it became apparent that I am doing this… and no one is making me this time.
Now simply I run and I wonder why?
