FEBRUARY 2024
I started dreaming of running.
Not of running away. Just running. I’d close my eyes at night, close the curtains on the grey sea beyond, and my mind would open, turn to the very physical feeling of legs moving, thighs rising, feet hitting the floor. I wondered what a therapist would think - my imaginings of the momentum of my body, arms striding, propelling forwards.
It was jarring, there was no doubt. I hadn’t been running since I was a teenager, when it had been compulsory. On school cross country runs, which we did weekly in the winter (why god in the winter?) - in tight cycling shorts and the boys appraising carefully - I was very nearly always last. On several occasions though, I remember finishing holding hands with a friend of mine, also not famed for her speed. The teacher, recording our place in the not-a-race-but-actually-very-much-a-race, would shake her head and say we’d have to choose who’s name she wrote first. I remember afterwards, feeling sick in the changing rooms, the rancid scent of old sweat and the fluorescent colours of the lockers mingling into one.
At school, if you forgot your games kit, running always would be the punishment. Not just the running of course, but the outfit from lost property you were forced to wear. It would either be hopelessly big or hopelessly small, both options feeling like the worst thing you could inflict on a teenage girl. Several laps of the astroturf, a chug up a muddy slope, a jog down to the sea. All equally horrifying.
The day when you walked in and saw your name on the lists for sports day was another to be particularly dreaded. Did I want to be beaten very badly, but at least very quickly, in the 100m, or did I want to beaten less badly, but much more slowly, at the 800m, as I dragged myself around two laps of the athletics track?
For so long both the inner narrative, and the outer confirmation had been that I wasn’t an athlete. On my first parents’ evening at secondary school, my PE teacher, with thighs like tree trunks, said to my parents ’she’s not as good as her brothers, is she?’ One good friend at school jovially told me I didn’t ‘deserve’ my shapely legs. My PE grade was consistently the lowest on my report card.
And yet, and yet.
I liked netball, my height meaning I wasn’t a total write-off. I loved walking, the long stretches of beaches in my childhood a bracing comfort. I’d spent a summer hurdling over a homemade bar in my parents’ garden, jumping higher and feeling stronger every time I propelled myself up. But all of this was usurped by a stronger narrative. Exercise wasn’t for a girl like me, who had always seen herself as a chubby teenager, was cripplingly self-conscious, and would always come last.
At the age of 30, I experienced one running dream too many. After work I drove to the retail park. Walking in, I was aware of the bright lights, the new-polyester scent, the toned students behind the tills. I made some small talk, and the student who served me didn’t tell me that the store wasn’t for people like me, who held hands with her arty friend so she didn’t come last in a race. I left with a pair of running trainers, six pairs of trainer socks, and a breathable t-shirt.
The next morning I pulled on the new gear, digging an ancient sports bra out of a drawer, looking in the mirror at the woman staring back, barely recognising her in slippery, highlighter-coloured clothes.
Encouraged by an app, I started doing thirty seconds of jogging at a time, with walking breaks in between bursts. I could hardly believe this was the secret of learning to run - walking when you felt you had absolutely lost your breath. Why had no one told me this before? I texted a friend who had run more marathons than I could count. ‘Of course. I have to walk sometimes, just walk until you almost feel you can run again.’ I returned feeling like I’d got away with something.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to run for longer periods. Five minutes, then ten. I gathered songs to run to in every growing playlists. I pulled on running clothes every morning I woke up. My biggest fear - of people I knew or even people I didn’t - seeing me hot, red, frizzy on the side of the road, began to recede. I started to to crave the pavement, the air stinging against my skin, the soil of the local woodland and the endorphins when recovering in a hot shower. In a matter of weeks, I was stopping only to eat blackberries on the verge, pee in pine forests, tie the odd shoelace. Miles added up and I told a friend on the phone, with undeniable pride, that I’d done my first 10k.
Another friend’s birthday arrived mid-pandemic. She wanted to run a half marathon, she said. Friends across the country starting at the same time, in different places around the UK. I said yes.
*
The day arrived. It was very cold and cloudy. I lined up Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand on my earbuds. Starting with energy as I meant to go on. I ran under tree canopies, over sand dunes, on roads I had never been on before. I felt new muscles. Capable. Free.
I finished in my parents’ kitchen, eating warm rounds of toast with ponds of butter, wiping the salt off my forehead with the back of my sleeve.
*
Buoyed by my first half, I went out on a long run one Sunday not long afterwards. My knee gave out in the middle of a forest, buckling so suddenly I nearly ended up on the pine-needled floor. I hobbled back to the car, tears building. The white hot pain got worse as I braked on the journey home.
Arriving at a sports physio appointment that week, I gingerly removed my leggings to show her the swollen joint. She studied me walking in the mirror and asked: ‘are you a runner then Jess?’
I looked at her, reddening. ‘No. I just started running a bit, you know, in the pandemic.’
She asked how far I was going and I told her.
‘Jess! Jesus. That means you’re a runner’
*
Good things to click on
This (above) was as a very very beautiful place to stay this month
Is there a vegetable lover in your life? I designed these to celebrate Anna Shep’s very exciting new book
Stripes of happiness
Sam made these and they were exquisite
Did you know about the Ladies of Llangollen?
A ceramic lemon that looks more real than a real one