About

At school I was one of the non-running kids.  When it came time of year for the athletic track to be badly drawn upon the football pitch, I would be grouped with the also rans in PE for the weekly ritual humiliation.   I didn’t mind this because generally I could hold my own in this company.  I accepted that nature had conferred upon me legs that were best suited to power lifting and that I would be a slave to cramp whenever I got into the zone.  It’s still true that when I shop for trousers I worry less about whether they go around my waist, than whether they will stretch over my calves.

Now in my early 40s nobody is more surprised than me when I declare my love for running and on occasions running a fairly long way in one go.  I stress I’m still an also ran.  I’m of the belief that any ambulatory person in decent health can run an ultra-marathon, but that you will still be bound to your level.  The streaky fast kids will still be the quickest, there’s just fewer of them between you and first place.  In a local 34 miler I finished 7th, nobody needed to know it was a field of 39.   That would probably equate to 13000th in the Great Birmingham Run and nobody wants to know there were 12999 folks who were better than you on that day!

Now for the Zen stuff.  I work in a totally sedentary job in a totally sedentary town where the only stress is mental and usually as a result of something or someone not working as it/they should.  I do the majority of my running on my own, often at night and for six months of the year in darkness.  Most of my runs are off road on the trails paths and hills  that surround and form part of the very same environment that chokes me during the day.  Running opens up the possibility to connect to a world that, despite being within reach to all, is closed to most.  This is meditation and mindfulness in action.  The run often starts with you contemplating impending challenges but maintaining the dialogue is impossible as you tune into the environment around you and the moment.

This is mostly why I do it, why I advocate it and why I love it.

But medals are cool too!