My bid to run every day of the month is continuing. I did a treadmill run yesterday as my wife and I were leaving the house soon after to see Hamilton, and I followed up with a road run today. The weather was bitterly cold, and the ground slippery, so it was a slow run wearing multiple layers, including woolly gloves, hat and hoodie. In some respects I don't mind running in cold weather, though. You can always get warmer, but there are limits to how cool you can keep yourself in the summer. On the other hand, I hate chasing the light in winter! Summer is nice because you can run as late in the evening as you like.
My relationship with running is an odd one, anyway. I can't say that I ever particularly enjoy it. Once in a blue moon, perhaps. Most of the time it's a drudge and a bore. What I do enjoy, massively, are finishing runs and the long-term benefits brought by activity.
I didn't even start running until my twenties. As a severely asthmatic child, I'd been actively advised against it in school, and the few occasions when I had to run, for one reason or another, resulted in a great deal of wheeziness and the likely onset of an asthma attack. Things changed after I set up in St Andrews in 1988 to do my doctorate in astronomy. My ever patient PhD supervisor, Ron Hilditch, was an avid runner. Another runner with a strong local connection to St Andrews was Menzies "Ming" Campbell, the then Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife, and the British record holder for the 100m sprint between 1967 to 1974. Ming was a familiar figure around St Andrews and was regularly seen running in the vicinity of the observatory. Suitably influenced by Ron and Ming, and since I already had trainers and shorts, it occurred to me that there was really nothing to stop me attempting to run. My first go, running the length of one field, resulted in the expected breathlessness and wheezing. Something odd happened, though, when I tried to run again no more than a couple of days later. I found that I managed to get around two sides of the field before the same collapse. It seemed impossible to me that any kind of lasting physiological change could have happened in such a short time, but the evidence was that I was able to run a bit further each time I went out. In fairly short time I could get around the whole field, and not long after, I could run around the field two times. After that, provided I managed my breathing carefully, there was essentially nothing to stop me running for half an hour. The thrill of discovering I could do this thing that had been supposedly closed to me until then was literally life-changing and running became a part of my routine thereafter.
Over the last thirty six years I have had occasional gaps in my running due to illness, injury and the usual life stuff, but I have rarely abstained for more than a few weeks at a time and I always feel the benefits when I resume some kind of regular activity. Parkrun, which has been part of my life since 2018, has been a great aid to maintaining steady running during the week, a fact that became really apparent when Covid shut down parkrunning in Wales for about eighteen months. I'm a parkrun evangelist and very proud to be one of the Run Directors for my local event, as part of a lovely team of volunteers. My knees are in fine shape, thanks - better than they were ten years ago, in fact. My asthma is still a factor (I grew out of it to a degree, but it's still there) but the medicines have got progressively more effective with time and the new stuff I'm on seems particularly good at managing early-morning wheeziness. I still find running boring, and it's a constant struggle to find new routes and new goals, but music helps, as does engagement with other runners, be it via parkrun or just the familiar faces you inevitably encounter on your beat. Anyway, although one never knows what the future will bring, I hope to keep running for some while, and I'm extremely grateful to Ron (and Ming) for planting the seed of an idea in my mind all those years ago.
If any of this has struck a chord, please take a look at my RED January fundraising page, where I'm hoping to raise 100 pounds for Mind over Mountains, to provide support for those struggling with mental health.
Thanks,
Al
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