Correspondence From Limbo

Breath in, count to four, breath out, count to four.

My legs are on fire, and I feel like my lungs might burst. The hill I’m running up isn’t particularly steep but I’m already gasping for air. Despite my continued assertions that the town I live in is a hole, topographically speaking the opposite is true. Hills are everywhere, and no matter where I run I need to climb at least one. The hills make it a struggle to maintain a consistent pace. 

A voice suddenly cuts through the music that’s blaring from my headphones: “Keep going, you’re doing amazing”. It’s my Couch to 5K app, informing me that I’m halfway through my run. The app I’m using allows you to select from a small group of celebrities to narrate your run. My choice was Sanjeev Kohli, or “Sanj” as I can apparently now call him. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard of Kohli before I started running, but I’m now pretty confident that, if I were to ever meet him, I would have some strong words for him about whether or not five minutes is enough time for me to get my breath back after jogging up a hill.

The app itself is strange, especially when it comes to how long it believes I should run for. Some weeks are more generous, telling me to run for a few minutes before taking an equally long break. Others are harsher; one of the runs I have to do requires me to run for twenty minutes straight without a break. 

Regardless of the length of my runs, of the hills and the weather, I keep running. My body is an infernal engine, forever moving, never stopping or slowing until I allow it to.

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Running is a surprisingly expensive pastime. Take shoes, for example. A pair of dedicated running shoes, that you will use for nothing except running, will cost you around £100. That isn’t including the time it takes to find a dedicated running shop which sells all the required accouterments, or to visit said shop and be shown around by a man who knows fair more about shoes than you will about anything. 

I went to one of these shops when I started running. Having grown out of my trainers two years ago, I didn’t have any appropriate shoes to run in, and I needed something to wear. Being inside one of these shops bought to mind the scene in the film A Walk in The Woods, the adaptation of the Bill Bryson book of the same name, where Bryson, portrayed by Robert Redford, is attempting to buy the equipment he needs to begin hiking the Appalachian Trail. There was a lot of me standing around, with a puzzled look on my face, as the store clerks talked about which shoes would give me the best grip, the best support, where I would be running, etc. There was even some talk about straps…

After being dragged around the shop, trying on various shoes, having my gait examined, running laps outside the shop, and generally feeling like I was being measured up to be ridden like a horse, I eventually left with a pair of “Brooks Beasts”, my first ever pair of running shoes.

But shoes were not the only purchase I could have made when it comes to running. Several websites suggest buying dedicated running clothes as well, and it’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole of high-priced items with dubious functions made out of strange materials. For the record, I avoided purchasing running socks or anything made out of “technical fabrics”, instead deciding on some old gym clothes.

Running is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be.

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My first run was a nightmare.  I don’t know what it was, maybe I didn’t warm up properly, perhaps I hadn’t eased myself into exercising slowly enough. Either way, my legs ached for days after the run, and I found it difficult to go walk at any speed.

Subsequent runs have been better, but it’s hard to know if it’s due to me improving as a runner, or because of something else entirely. Despite Sanjeev/the app’s insistence that I’m getting better at running, that my stamina is increasing, I feel like I’m not improving at all. I still get winded easily, and it takes a while for me to recover after each run. 

The more I run, the less convinced I am that I’m improving. 

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I was originally going to call this piece “What I Talk About When I Talk About Jogging”, a reference to the Murakami memoir “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”. I haven’t actually read Murakami’s memoir, but I want to. It calls to me, for a variety of reasons. I’ve known about the book for a while, but I’ve never picked it up, never flicked through it. It was while doing some research that I came across a particular Guardian article that talked at length about Murakami’s book, and that made me more determined to add the book to my reading pile.

The Guardian article mentioned that Murakami saw a correlation between running and his writing, that he was more creative when he was able to get outside and run. And I think I know what he means. I initially began running as a way to get fit, to allow me to get outside for reasons other than just walking to work. And, while running, while sucking air into my lungs and forcing my legs to move, I’ve been able to come up with ideas that I want to pursue. I no longer run to improve myself but to instead improve my writing. One day, when the pandemic is over and life can take on a semblance of what it once was, I would like to run a marathon, or 10K, or attend some other sporting event. I would like to see if I have made progress. And I’d love to see what effects it would have on my writing.

Breath in, breath out. Keep going, you’re almost there.