LOVE IN THE TIME OF CORONA – RUNNING

I was never completely convinced that I loved running. We had a tempestuous affair, on and off, start and stop. Sometimes a marathon, sometimes a sprint, sometimes nothing more than a lumbering, sweaty, heaving trudge through rain, wind buffeting my face into a series of gurns and grimaces.

Despite that, running seems to have made itself part of my life. One marathon before the age of 25 became three before 30. Pairs of trainers for road and trail have proliferated. Visits to the physio have fortunately remained rare. I have run two marathons in the past 12 months. Running is what I do at lunchtimes when I work from home, looping round Greenwich Park and Blackheath or up and down the Thames path. Running is how I explore new places when travelling for business. Running is also what I did after watching the government’s first Coronavirus broadcast.

“Putting one foot in front of another, over and over again, might actually be the most important thing we can do”

My first marathon put the amble in shambles. Undertrained, underprepared, and unsurprisingly underenjoyed. I had run two half marathons at University and somehow convinced myself that I wanted to complete a marathon before I reached 25. I signed up for Rome in 2014, having never been, but thinking that it would be a nice excuse. Reams of Italian paperwork later, and the venture was scotched. The organisers required a signed health assessment from a doctor. My GP declined to provide one without a £120 consultation. I baulked. With some research, it turned out that it was cheaper to fly to Madrid and enter the marathon there than to pay the medical fee. So that’s what I did.

I was young and fit, playing regular hockey and squash, so I reasoned I could skip some of the early stages of training and jump in around the seven-dmile mark. Needless to say, I was wrong. Injury followed in the form of shin splints. Three weeks of lost training exacerbated my idiocy, and I compounded the problem by jumping back in to target mileage as if I hadn’t missed any running. This time it was my right IT band that went, four weeks from the race, on my 20-mile training run. The limp home from four miles out on that run was my last activity before the race, and I arrived in Madrid unsure of whether I would manage a hundred metres, a mile or beyond. Miraculously, I survived and did finish. But apart from some isolated moments of elation, it was more struggle than satisfaction. My body wasn’t prepared for the strain, and I hadn’t done enough (read any) research on the route. The slog for the last six miles was a misery, through unseasonable rain and cold and almost entirely uphill to a finish line that was a mess of shivering runners. It was Madrid at the end of April and the organisers had been planning for sun and warmth, not seven degrees Celsius and 36 hours of rain that had left sizeable puddles on the route and soaked every runner’s shoe by mile 2. There were no aluminium blankets and foolishly I hadn’t left any warm clothes for the finish. So I shuffled back to my hotel, my sore hips seemingly glued in place.

I had slipped outside my four-hour goal by eight minutes, and despite the moments of elation (mainly the start line and the finish line, with the occasional punctuations of high fives from the crowd, and live music), I vowed that I would never run a marathon again. I did not keep my word.

Four years later, I found myself joining my girlfriend’s family for a new running challenge. The things we do for love turned out to be a marathon. In this case 26 miles of trails through a live safari park in South Africa. This time there was no route complacency. Nine kilometres of sand, a three-kilometre climb at around 40 degrees of gradient that had to be both descended and scaled. A peak altitude of 1700m. A route inspection the day before the race took three hours in a jeep, such was the nature of the terrain.

It was completely brilliant throughout. The terrifying thrill of watching a pack of wildebeest cross the road only metres in front of a group of runners. The moment a few miles in when we mere mortals first saw the race leader, who turned out to be the modest, funny Canadian we had shared game drives and dinners with throughout the week. The dancing staff handing out food and drinks at regular intervals. The joy of being completely alone in a pristine wilderness.

I was fitter and better prepared than I had been in Madrid. My training had been rigorous and slow building, mixing hill sprints in with long runs to build the stamina for the unusual demands of the race’s geography. The real difference though was mental. Running a trail race on this kind of ground meant times would be at least 30% slower than usual, and so zero chance of breaking any personal bests. Finishing before the seven hour cut off became the challenge, and even then it was a daunting one. But it was also liberating. No clock watching, just flowing faster or slower, or even down to a walk as my body or the course dictated. Just existing in the word and finding your way through it. When, about five hours in, elephants blocked the route 1.5km from the finish line and I was met by a jeep telling runners to get in and wait, it took several moments to emerge from the running mindset and understand what was happening.

Fast forward six months, and several of the survivors of The Big Five Marathon were gathered in Bermuda to run the revamped Triangle Challenge, a three race series comprising a 1 mile, 10k and marathon crammed into 3 days and 53 square kilometres of Atlantic island.

Again I had trained well. This time breaking the four hour barrier seemed achievable. However, the course was renowned for its undulating nature and I had no idea how the extra miles less than 24 hours before a marathon would affect me. With the adrenaline, I ran the mile faster than planned, before jogging the 10k at easy target pace. As the marathon itself rolled up and down the coastline, I realised my legs were feeling good. As the elite half marathoners with their motorbike escort passed me a mile into their race I realised my legs were still feeling good. As I summited the major hill in the second half of the race, with 8 miles to go, they still seemed in good order. Miles 20-24 were the toughest. The weather took a turn for the worse, and the road carried on winding. Unlike in Madrid though, perhaps armed with the lessons of South Africa, I was determined to smile through the pain. This was what I had trained for. I was in a beautiful place, pushing my limits, surrounded by exceptional people doing the same. I eventually crossed the finish line in 3 hours 43 minutes. I had a high five from a friend, grabbed a medal and a glass of dark n’ stormy, and as for most of the race, couldn’t stop grinning.

Running can make the world both excitingly gigantic and infinitesimally small. How else to explain the feeling of unmapped exploration you can get from a trail run. How else to explain how a man met by my girlfriend’s parents during the Great Wall of China marathon could become our electrician in London.

Running can dissipate stubborn, nebulous unhappiness and doubt. When I moved house and began to work two days a week from home, it helped to provide a rhythm and a reward, a lunchtime to look forward to. It has helped process confusion and anger and grief. I ran the Madrid marathon to raise money for the extraordinary Macmillan Cancer Care, in support of my even more extraordinary Mum who had been diagnosed a year earlier and passed away in 2018. Without realising it, it was running that I turned to on my mum’s first birthday after she died, a short sunset trail run around one of our shared favourite places, Blackdown in Surrey.

That is not to say that there aren’t days where I hate it. To run between Greenwich and Woolwich is to discover that there must be a fifth compass point. Whatever direction the runner takes, the wind will find a way to his or her face. Choose the time wrong and you are liable to get wet socks if the tide sends water spilling over the path or to have to dodge parents and children doing the school run. The idea of going for a run never quite stops feeling like a chore, until you’re moving, and then it’s almost impossible to regret.

Alan Bennett, in The History Boys, defined history as “one fucking thing after another”. The uncharitable might describe running in similar terms, as one fucking step in front of another, one mile more, one more interval.

But in running, as in history, there is peace to be found by those who look for it. Even if it is easier to see the pain, upheaval and ferocious hard work, those things aren’t what is actually important.

Small moments of calm, exploration, discovery, fresh air. The idea that putting one foot, in front of another, over and over again, might actually be the most important thing we can do.