OK, so you could read Born to Run, with the argument that we evolved to hunt down prey by chasing them until they collapse, but this doesn't explain why most people don't run. The biological urge just doesn't seem very strong in most people. No, the decision to run or not run is a social one - have each of us been influenced in such a way that leads us to this activity?
This is my parents in 1963. No, this is my mum and dad; more familiar. Inside that bike trailer was me at the tender age of one and I presume we used to go on weekend bike rides. My parents met in a cycle club and cycling was a way of life, so when I was born the outdoor existence just continued.
As I grew up, on and out of the family epicentre, Mum and Dad turned away from cycling, to orienteering and then on to walking. Not just weekend strolling down to the park, but big stuff. When I phoned up Mum last month to crow about my successful completion of the Welsh Ultra 40 mile race she reminded me that when Dad was my age he was completing the LDWA 100 miles. Walking rather than running, but still. Put me in my place, rightfully.
So, the connection is clear. Dad always said that when he got to the top of a mountain he wanted to run like a dog and I feel the same pulling at me. Mum was on the phone this week worried that despite being in her seventies, her knees hurt when she walks more than 15 miles. Rather than writing herself off due to age she has paid for a private consultant to sort things out so she can get back to 25+ miles.
So, why do we run? Is there an alternative? Not for me.
When Dad died all sorts of stories surfaced about his life, including the fact that when he was 13 he lived in a tent in the garden in the middle of London, and at 15 he forged his age to join the YHA and cycled off for a week on his own. Now, I am not like that, but seeds get sown and lodge deep in the heart. That engagement with the countryside and a throwing off of constructed matter is a thread that travels through him to me. And Mum's need to push on rather as a dog gnaws a bone, provides a foot on the accelerator pedal.
I owe my parents such an enormous amount. I owe them the yearning to get up and out. I owe them the limbic joy of working hard up a hill. I also owe them for all the phone calls on a Sunday night inquiring about how I have got on in this race or that, when I suspect that my figurative eyes glazed over when they they told me about what they had done, despite that fact that it was probably 2, 5 or 10 times longer than I had run.
Feel every inch, note every movement, smell all. Warm, cool, sink into the soil, sense the space. That's why I run
