Fell Running

Running has been associated with pain for as long as I can remember. As a child resentful of his given name, I was permanently on the lookout for namesake role models, and beyond the chubby cricketer Colin Cowdrey there weren’t many. But vividly etched on my mind were the haunting, pained, agonised features of Colin in the great 1962 black and white classic The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner. Memorably played by Tom Courtney, this Colin was not just running, but on the run, escaping the miseries of a childhood of poverty and neglect, as he ate up the lonely flat miles of the English Midlands. Never has a landscape looked as bleak; never has a runner looked more anguished. Not promising.

Later at school, came the true horrors of cross country runs in freezing Derbyshire winters. What could be worse than watching as the usual suspects roared off into the distance, and finding yourself puffing along asthmatically with the heavyweights and the smokers? Teachers were stationed like sentries at strategic points en route, standing sadistically by stiles, but in between there opened up stretches of muddy fields where it was possible to walk and talk, and even get lost.

There was a brief moment when running looked cool, Sheffield producing a local hero, the great middle distance runner Seb Coe, - not a Colin, but at least we were from the same place, even a pupil at my mother’s school-and he made it look so effortless. But it wasn’t long before the revelation that he was- oh horrible- a young Conservative, that he fell from grace in our household. My father never recovered.

Later, in my first teaching job, at the kind of boarding school where wealthy children arrived clutching combination locked briefcases, I was, to my horror, put in charge of cross country running. I had no illusions about my abilities- navigating across unknown Surrey countryside with a group of eleven year olds would have been bad enough, but running as well! Hell could not offer more exquisite torture, and it was no surprise when we got hopelessly lost, it rained, and we wandered into supper a couple of hours late, to an ironic standing ovation from the school.

So when I set off for my first run about three years ago, it was with no great expectations. The first problem was the app, in which a bossy American female voice barked orders and encouragement in a sort of 1:1 ratio- it was months before my son explained that it was actually possible to turn her off, and by that time my nerves were shredded. And then there was the question of what to run to- I started off with Bach’s St Matthew Passion, admittedly a bizarre choice, but it was Easter, and I think I felt an unusual bond with the sufferings on the cross. My approach was completely clueless, inspired by Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, charging full tilt into the valley of death, with no idea of pacing.

I think I imagined that the experience had to be painful, and anything which could make it more so also made it more valuable- so I would set the alarm early, stagger out into the chill, and set off like a mad thing, returning in time to go off to college and attempt to teach. By the end of period 1, I would be close to collapse. After a few months of suffering I gave up, having come to loathe every track on the heavily Motown influenced playlist I’d put together, even the immortal Diana Ross now inextricably linked to the sensation of stiff knees.

And yet, according to the app on my phone, which I trust as I trust all technology, I have completed exactly one hundred recorded runs; a small step for mankind, a great, and surprising one for me. Living amidst the beauties of West Cornwall certainly helps, as does the realisation that from my house to Marazion and back is exactly 10km- and who could resist a run when its backdrop is so sublime?

But I’m in sorely need of a new playlist, so if anyone has any suggestions...