This piece was published in Issue 42 of Like the Wind magazine
You just, if you're able, move one foot in front of the other. Like walking but faster (though sometimes it may not feel it).
My dad ran. My uncle ran. My cousin ran. It was in my orbit from a young age.
My earliest memory of doing it in both an organised and leisurely sense is from around 1990/91 and, if I really squint, I can see my mum and some other women in shell suits trotting very slowly along the outer perimeter of Barking Rugby Club as the men, my dad one of them, disappeared ahead.
My most recent run was yesterday. I covered 11.7km of road, my mind covered a distance not quantifiable by any metric and it was fucking brilliant.
I find myself in La Manga Club. A resort near Murcia, Spain and, without doubt, the kind of place J.G Ballard was inspired by to write Cocaine Nights. Thousands of homes populate the resort. Those in the particular ‘community’ we’re visiting Jade’s dad in are surrounded by high walls and taller trees. Gates protect the cars no one is around to steal. A security car occasionally crawls by to let you know you’re safe. Who from, I don’t know. The distant sound of a splash in an unseeable pool confirms you’re not alone. But it feels like you are. Anonymity in community.
Anyway, I kitted up, minus the top (there’s something about that holiday sun beating on your back), put my earphones in and lined up a Country Folk playlist for the run. Running with music is a grey area for me. Sometimes I see it as cheating, others I see it as complimentary. It depends on the run. Knowing this particular effort was for my soul, I felt the poets of Americas south would help me access it a little quicker and add a little texture to the new surrounds.
I didn’t know where I was going - in a literal sense. I just headed ‘down’. The roads were dead so I ran in them, offering an added sense of freedom, until joining the road into the resort where I trespassed in a cycle lane. Strava was on but the pressure was off. I was just running.
The straight line allowed my thoughts to take a more windy path.
A boy named Paul Stewart came to mind. Specifically a morning I knocked on his door around the age of 12 to see if he was free. He wasn’t. He was heading to a cross-country run. I ended up going with him, ruining a good pair of trainers in the process. I remembered his genuine enthusiasm at the number printed on the ticket handed to me as I finished. 46. I wondered what ever happened to him.
Fatherhood came up. Specifically an experience at the airport the day before. The toilet paper was distributed in single sheets. “That won’t do when the boys are here,” I thought. Funny what you think of. “I’ll need to pack accordingly. For someone else, not just for me.”
This naturally led me to my dad. Not before advice from a man named Paul came to me; “Prepare the kid for the path, not the path for the kid.”
“Did my dad prepare me for the path?” I asked as I followed a sign for a cemetery. “No,” was the instinctive answer. But perspective came as the strides continued. He grew up in a shit hole, shared a bed with four brothers and his parents were crap. He ensured the opposite for my brother and I. Did he equip me as well as he’d have liked before he died? I’ll never know. “Did he equip me at all?” I asked myself.
Not in any obvious way. Maybe he ran out of time. Maybe I’ve forgotten. But he gave me running. I’m only just beginning to realise the significance of this as a tool.
My relationship with it over the past 30 years has been ‘on/off’ which is a shame given it’s something I’m genetically suited to. The application has always been the issue if you can call it that.
I wanted to play football. First for the idols I found on the TV then for the idols I made of the friends I found in senior school. I spent too much time putting effort into improving on something I wasn’t naturally good at instead of harnessing something I was to fit in.
Running was always on the radar though and I’d told my dad I’d love to run a marathon with him when I was old enough. He died when I was 17 so I decided to put my efforts into running one ‘for him’ the following year. My family embraced the sentiment and were pleased to see me engaging in something positive after a short period of unruly behaviour. It went well and it didn’t. Initial enthusiasm on my part was dampened by a running coach who felt putting his hand up my shorts would help and once the marathon was completed I moved away from it again. It took 20 years to tell anyone that. I started with my mum. It confirmed her suspicions about the guy all along.
I was vulnerable at that time and, as I ran yesterday, it struck me how the tool my dad had handed me could simultaneously threaten me. There’s a hint cruelty in that.
Back to fatherhood. Back to my dad and wondering how much more of him will surface in me as I navigate fatherhood. Will it all be good or will I discover new shadows? What would I want to give my boys that i didn’t get from him?
And then a cat. It reminded me of Seussy. It looked nothing like him but was one of his kind and provided a conduit to memories of him, of his weight on my chest and nose touching mine.
Thought done. Move on to the internal tug of war with what I want from running. A curiosity to see what my body is capable of before the curtain draws on the window of peak fitness versus just wanting to run, to move, to meditate I guess. One is for my ego, one is for my soul. Understanding those two things coexist will help me navigate my journey with the act much more easily. Yesterday was for the latter.
As I found myself back on the home straight, back in the cycle lane, I enjoyed the freedom of running with no target. No expectation. I was able to enjoy the strong head wind and appreciate the challenge of it, how it would strengthen my resolve for an ‘ego’ run down the line.
A red Fiesta passed me, heading in the opposite direction. I saw my ex-wife, Cheryl behind the wheel and drew parallels with the opposing directions our lives have taken over the past few years. She’s heading towards something I can’t see, something behind me. I’m heading back to the villa and the woman growing my two boys.
Just one more hill before I get there.
Running doesn't have to be that deep. But for me it is.
JF