017: Life Around Running

It’s Sunday afternoon. I’m in the departure lounge of Gatwick Airport, tucked away in a quiet corner of one of the coffee shops.

My phone’s camera roll is considerably fuller than it was on Thursday, I’m verging on sunburnt and my clothes still smell faintly of tyre smoke.

More importantly, I haven’t been for a run all weekend and, perhaps more surprisingly, I haven’t missed it in the slightest.

I’ve spent the past few days at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, surrounded by cars, cameras and thousands of people who also concluded that watching very expensive and historic machinery roar up a hill climb course was a reasonable way to spend a weekend.

This is a trip I’ve come to make a yearly tradition, partly because of my love for cars, racing and design, but also because of the one rule I make for this weekend:

“No running shoes are to be packed.”

No early morning 5K before breakfast, no parkrun tourism… I don’t even know if the hotel had a gym.

It’s a weekend to be somewhere else, doing something else.

And sitting here now, waiting for my flight home, I find myself thinking that this might be a healthier thing than I once would have realised.

It’s fair to say running occupies a significant part of my life.

It shapes my schedule for the day, fills my calendar for months and accounts for a wild amount of my laundry. I spend hours doing it, hours thinking about it and, increasingly, more hours writing about it.

The first half of this year in particular, training has been a constant presence in my life. I can’t remember the last week that didn’t have a weekly mileage or elevation target, long runs and recovery days, or a spreadsheet to be consulted each day to see what awaits me next.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love it.

But perhaps because I love it, I also think it’s important that I can leave it behind.

I think runners can fall victim to an anxiety that creeps in around their chosen pastime, especially when they begin to find their place in the sport. Commitment gradually starts to feel like obligation, a missed run feels like lost fitness and a weekend away becomes an unnecessary disruption.

Worst of all, rest becomes something to be justified.

Before long, something we chose to invest time in because of the value it adds to our lives begins to dictate how those lives are to be lived.

And who wants that?

This weekend, I took about 900 photos. I stood beside cars I’d only ever seen in books or racing on television. I witnessed beautiful machines I’ve admired since childhood being driven by legends as they were intended to be driven. I wandered around until my feet hurt, paid too much for a pint and probably inhaled quite a lot of tyre smoke.

And at no point did I feel like I should have been somewhere else.

I didn’t feel guilty about the miles I wasn’t running. I didn’t feel like I was losing fitness or falling behind.

I was simply there.

I think that’s the best sign that running has found its proper place in my life.

It’s not that I never miss a session, or that I’m always motivated, or that I remain endlessly disciplined. It’s the fact that, every now and again, I can forget about it.

Because there’s more to life than running.

(Which I get is maybe a weird thing to say on a website where all I talk about is running, but perhaps this is exactly where it’s worth saying.)

You’re allowed to have other interests and have weekends that contribute absolutely nothing to your fitness.

You’re allowed to stay up late, sleep in, travel, take photos, read books, play guitar, play chess or watch cars race up a hill and then sit in the airport editing the photos.

None of these things make us less committed. If anything, I think they help us stop the thing we like to do from becoming the only thing we are.

So, the next time you’re stressing about a missed run, worrying that a weekend away is going to derail months of hard work or feeling guilty because life has interrupted the training plan, just remember:

The roads and trails will still be there when you get back.

Your fitness won’t disappear over the course of a few days, and all the work you’ve already done won’t suddenly be undone because you chose to spend a little time doing something else.

There is more to life than running, and it’s good to go and live some of it.

P.S. If anyone wants to see any of my car photos, I’ll be happy to oblige.