My day began with the disconcerting discovery that having foolishly left my running shoes directly on top of the radiator after a particularly soggy ascent the previous day, one innersole had warped entirely and detached from the shoe. In addition to the already split toe box and holes in either side, this didn’t really seem ideal. I was due to meet my friend Rebecca for a run within the hour, and in a desperate bid to fabricate some arch support I tore out the remaining innersole and hastily stuffed in a pair of worn out Odour Eaters, beneath some ageing orthotics that I was too mortified to wear as a teenager.
“Dear god, give me some arch support.”
My recent forays into fell and trail running really have driven home the necessity of appropriate footwear. Sporadic knee pain and also the impending sense of ‘I’m about to land on my arse’ brought on by a muddy downhill dash have definitely left me looking at my holey old gym buddies with that same such feeling of a long-term relationship reaching its ultimate demise. They’ve been good to me, it’s not their fault – I’ve changed.
I used to run to be thin. That’s really it. I achieved a vague and fleeting sense of accomplishment when someone would say I looked skinny or I could buy a certain size dress, yet never once in my days of carefully calculated food consumption did I ever watch that calorie counter on the gym treadmill quietly tick over the 800 mark and think to myself –
“Wow, that felt great.”
Back then, the only value I attributed to running was weight loss. When I ran on the roads from my house, I didn’t plan routes that were scenic, adventurous or rewarding, my only resolve was to run as far as I needed to burn off whatever calories I had consumed that day, a cycle that never truly yielded satisfaction. My shiny pink and silver trainers remained staunchly mud-free, slaves to the flat and the vapid terrain and needless to say, I didn’t keep it up.
Retrospectively, I’m not sure if I want to hug twenty-something year old me or to give her a good shake, but I suppose I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without her. That old adage.
During the first lockdown of this year, I started to run again. I was living in Hawkshead in the Lake District and decided that the roads were quiet enough that I could almost unselfconsciously run from my flat, to a bridge just 2.5km up the road and back again. I did this surreptitiously and alone at first, vaguely embarrassed that my now good friend Rebecca was a fell runner herself. Gradually, my times improved. I tried a circuit of Esthwaite water, around 7.5km. Again, following the roads, but with some undulations that inspired me to improve my uphill running technique, I wanted to do the entire circuit without walking. Sometimes I felt physically sick, sometimes I had stitches that I thought were going to be the end of me. I cautiously talked to Rebecca and to my friend Sue (who suggested I borrow her spaniel for motivation) about my running one day. Nobody laughed at me.
One day, I did the circuit. No walking. When a few years previously I would have gone home and carefully weighed out my vegetables for dinner, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, laid myself out in the evening sun and basked in the beauty of what my body had just done, regardless of what it weighed. It would be reductive and dishonest to suggest that I was somehow miraculously cured of my fixation with weight loss one day, or that I no longer associate exercise with it. I was not, I still do, and it has been a journey. But it is no longer my primary reason for doing what I do.
After that, I ran in the forest. Slogging up hills in Grizedale with my borrowed spaniel in tow (who am I kidding, he was miles ahead), I came across mountain bikers and hikers and runners alike who all greeted me cheerily. I repeat – nobody laughed at me.
I still can’t run up hills. I run a bit, jog a bit, power-walk a bit, stand still and pretend to be taking in the view whilst actually trying to regain control over my impulse to vomit a bit… and then, I gallop across the tops, smiling from ear to ear, the rain and the wind slashing at my face, my lungs heaving, full of clean, mountain air. I descend the rocky, muddy slopes like a toddler who has gathered a bit of momentum and can’t quite stop their legs from moving, equal parts exhilarated and terrified. Running for me is no longer about burning calories, or achieving an entirely unobtainable standard of perceived physical perfection. It is about the intrinsic experience, the dopamine hit, and as cliche as it may sound – the journey rather than the destination.
I like running alone. I like running with others. In a spontaneous act of bravery I reached out to the Wonderful Wild Women facebook group and actively sought new friends to run with, casting aside my self-consciousness and unapologetically admitting to my inexperience, my slowness and the fact that I am somewhat ‘directionally challenged’, and you know what? Nobody laughed at me. I met up with a fabulous and much-fitter-than-me woman called Jennie and ran my first Wainwright, she was patient and wise and, well, a wonderful wild woman.
I ran today with Rebecca. The 10km Whinlatter Trail, in the rain. We dramatically compromised our uphill times, chatting and laughing, but we saw a red squirrel and a woodpecker and grinned like idiots as we ran, arms in the air, through the Forestry Commission archways that mark the end of the route. Afterwards we huddled in a shop doorway in Keswick as I tried on her shoes, and ‘click and collect’ purchased the exact same pair (the outdoor girl’s shopping in the time of Corona).
I haven’t yet abandoned my old trainers – as a guilt-ridden environmentalist and massive sucker for sentimentality, I’ll hang on to them like an old flame. Maybe one day we’ll take a walk together and talk about how we just ‘drifted apart’, and how things have changed.