Running in Literature: Mr Standfast

This is interesting because running was added in an adaptation rather than being in the original.


The Classic Serial, on the radio, on Sunday, was Mr Standfast. Towards the end, in the pause before the final action sequence, Richard Hannay is in hiding in a hut in the Alps. He wants to increase his fitness because he knows there are trials ahead and so has a routine of training in the night.

On the radio the routine was described with the sound effect of running footfalls and panting and the narrator saying: “I would slip outdoors and go for a run and push up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet”

I thought it rather striking and pictured the scene and could almost sense the refreshment of being alone in the clear mountain air. Ah I thought this might worth checking as an example of running in literature, to see if it gave any extra insight about attitudes at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. I found instead that it was nothing to do with running at all. The actual passage was:

I would slip out-of-doors and go for a four or five hours' tramp. Wonderful were those midnight wanderings. I pushed up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet and above me a host of glittering stars. Once on a night of full moon I reached the glacier at the valley head, scrambled up the moraine to where the ice began, and peered fearfully into the spectral crevasses. At such hours I had the earth to myself, for there was not a sound except the slipping of a burden of snow from the trees or the crack and rustle which reminded me that a glacier was a moving river.

Why has tramping been replaced by running? I can only think that the need to compress the text lead the adaptor to use running as a short hand to indicate a fitness regime and that to our modern ears walking would not convey the message. But the change makes no real sense because walking up mountains, in the dark, for four or five hours is very hard and challenging and you can still, legitimately use the sound effect of heavy breathing . Running up those same mountains in the dark is probably suicidal.

I can only think that the Edwardian writer understood the value of hard sustained aerobic exercise for strength and endurance, whilst the modern writer did not.