2011 Streak: Day 141/365: Every run is a life

2011 Streak: Day 141/365: Run - 3.67 miles, Time - 34min 25sec, Weather - blue skies, white clouds

"… because the long-distance run of an early morning makes me think that every run like this is a life, I know - but a life as full of misery and happiness and things happening as you can ever get really around yourself - and I remember that after a lot of these runs I thought it didn't need much know-how to tell how a life was going to end once it had got well started." - 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner'

The Loneliness of the Long Distance runner is not really a story about running. Running is used as a framing device for the interior monologue of a youth, locked up in Borstal, pitting his sense of life and who he is, against authority figures ("cops, governors, posh whores, penpushers, army officers, Members of Parliament") and social structures. It is the thinking of someone with little formal education but acute insight and a sense if inner freedom.

"I'll win in the end, even if I die in gaol at eighty-two, because I'll have more fun and fire out of my life than he'll (the governor) ever get out of his. He's read a thousand books I suppose and for all I know might even have written a few, but I know for a dead cert, as sure as I'm sitting here, that what I am scribbling down is worth a million to what he could eve scribble down."

Although not about running, the story uses that quality of running which frees the mind to follow its own course. The way a thread can be followed for a bit, be interrupted when something is observed, be returned to, and then be dropped without a conclusion because something else has taken its place. It is a clever structural device

But there are also a couple of passages that runners can read and nod at in agreement:

"Sometimes I think that I've never been so free as during that couple of hours when I'm trotting up the path out of the gates and turning by that bare faced, big bellied oak tree at the lane end. Everything's dead, but good, because it is dead before coming alive, not dead after being alive. That's how I look at it. Mind you, I often fell frozen stiff at first. I can't feel my hands, or feet or flesh at all, like a ghost who wouldn't know the earth was under him if he didn't see it now and again through the mist. But even though some people would call the frost pain suffering if they wrote about it to their mams in a letter, I don't, because I know that in half an hour I'm going to be warm, by the time i get to the main road and am turning on to the wheatfield footpath by the bus stop I'm going to feel as hot as a potbellied stove and as happy as a dog with a tin tail."

Nevertheless the isight I like the best is the one this post started with - that each run is like a life.

So what sort of life did today's run have? Well I'm afraid the poor little chap struggled a bit as things didn't come easily to him. He just had to battle on, which he did, and was so given some marks for effort. The life was moderately satisfactory

Running in Literature iv: Mohawk

I had an idea for a series of posts called 'Running in literature'. Whenever I found a novel running was significant, or a non-running book that made some point about running, I would note it and make some comment. Unfortunately the weakness in this is the random nature of my reading and a lack of effort in searching out running references. As a result the series is sparse. Nevertheless things sometimes crop up especially if I can stretch the criteria a little to include small descriptions of someone running.

He is a large man, and while his movements are efficient in the narrow space behind the familiar lunch counter, he's lost and sluggish in open spaces. H runs the first fifty yards to the base of Hospital Hill, but when he starts up the grade he slows like a swamp bound dinosaur. .. Harry imagines that he is still running, but only his crazy arm jerks suggest rapid motion. Otherwise he looks like a fat comedian doing an impression of an Olympic walker, all hips an elbows. He thinks of all those childhood dreams where he was pursued by something nameless and fearsome, his legs heavy and rooted like tree trunks.

From Mohawk by Richard Russo.

I like the small observation at the beginning that Harry could move efficiently, and was perfectly adapted, in his day to day work but was lost in open spaces. I like the insight that we become moulded by our every day activities and specialisation, which makes us efficient also confines our abilities in other circumstances. I also like the observation that running is about being in open spaces as this is at the heart of its attraction for me. I love open spaces, hearing the birds, feeling the wind seeing the green of the trees and dark of the water, and most of all being surrounded by the variety of life. It is this reimder of life that makes me feel most alive.

Running in Literature iii - The Vertical Hour

The vertical Hour is a play by David Hare concerned with the relationship between private attitudes and public events. It starts with a definition of politics being about ways to reconcile the differing desires of people and then shows how the failure to do that in the character's personal lives has led to a certain amount of wreckage.

The bulk of the play involves three people talking. The son is a capable person, a successful physiotherapist, now living in America. His girlfriend is an academic,who had previously been a war reporter, supported the war in Iraq (which was one of the topics). The father used to be an eminent doctor in London but now lives in isolation in Shropshire and practices as a GP..

The father has an unsettling, clear eyed intelligence, whilst the son's temperament is more ameliorating and he is therefore more easily put on the defensive.

About half way through there is a nice exchange about the medicalisation of exercise, and in particular running

S - There is a fine line between formal physiotherapy and providing a client with a sense of well being

F - What does it mean?

S - I've just explained

F - Its not strict medical practise you say, its not orthodox medicine what is it? what do you offer? give me examples

S- Well I've got people on my staff: therapists, osteopaths, personal trainers

F - Personal trainers! Jesus Christ what do you do? do you send people out for a run?

S - Dad!

F - I was just asking a question.

S - What's wrong with running what's demeaning about that?

F - Nothing. Do you go running?

S - No not me personally. I employ people
...
F – If you want to know what I think. Well, I've done lots of interesting things with my patients but I've never sent the fuckers out for a jog. . I mean are you serious? ..putting in all that effort years of study , hard work , what do you do? Handing out those ridiculous little bottles of water and lifting weights?

S - You know as well as I do there are cultural factors in medicine You yourself used to teach me there is no such thing as pure medicine.

F - No but there is such a thing as charging 25O bucks to take obese Americans for a spin in the park

S - You think that's what I do?

F - And there's a word for it too

S - Jesus do you really think that's what I get up to?

F - I don't know what you get up to I'm a doctor not a personal healer

S - Personal Trainers Dad! Personal trainers. Not personal healers. Dad look, I take on people. Ordinary people. You say tell them the truth and stay with them to the end well what about delaying the end. What's wrong with that? Its not ignoble is it? Put off the end why not? Get fit. Feel better. Sort out your problems

F- Sort out your problems? Good God don't tell me you talk to the bastards as well

PS The dialogue is a bit approximate as it was taken down from listening to the radio

At the heart of this is the scorn of a medical man for an industry which charges a lot of money for feelings of well being. The word 'running' is voiced with such a mixture of incredulity and contempt, it is funny (as is the last line). Alone this is enough to make this snatch of dialogue noteworthy.

I must admit it adds nothing to our understanding of running as thats not the really the subject (illustrating the differences of outlook, the relationship between a father and son, and the mixing of medicine and the treating of illness with the vaguer concept of wellness, are the main topics). However it serves to remind us that, from the outside, what we do can be open to a certain amount of mockery.

From the inside though, running has more in common with the rather neat aphorism of what it means to be a doctor: ' tell the truth and stick with them till the end'. Running is a way of learning about our limitations, accepting them and then carrying on.

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.

Running in Literature: Widmerpool

An occasional series that will be continued whenever I come across a character who has any sort of interesting relationship with running.

Dance to the Music of Time is a sequence of twelve novels that describes the social milieu around the central narrator Nicholas Jenkins. There two main types of reaction to it: some people reject it as just the social record of a load of toffs, whilst others make extraordinarily high claims. (There is a quote on my copy from Clive James 'I think it is now becoming clear that A Dance To The Music of Time is going to become the greatest modern novel since Ulysses'). Myself, I think it is wonderful, full of insight and wry observation, but that is neither here nor there as I am not here to write a review. I only want to highlight a small detail that in a novel sequence with a precise architecture, where patterns and symmetries are important, it begins and end with running.

Widmerpool is probably the character who looms the largest throughout the novels. Although not likeable or sympathetic, he is a force and fascinating in his strengths and weaknesses. In the beginning he is fixed as he comes out of the mist.

By this stage of the year - exercise no longer contestable five days a week - the road was empty; except for Widmerpool, in a sweater once white and a cap one size too small, hobbling unevenly, though with determination on the flat heels of spiked running shoes…Widmerpool was known to go voluntarily for 'a run' by himself every afternoon. This was his return from the plough in drizzle that had been falling since early school…As the damp , insistent cold struck up from the road, two thin jets of steam drifted out of his nostrils, by nature much distended, and all at once he seemed to possess a painful solidarity that talk about him had never conveyed. Something comfortless and inelegant in his appearance suddenly impressed itself on the observer, as stiffly, almost majestically, Widmerpool moved on his heels out of the mist.

I think this is fine writing with small details like the 'two thin jets of steam' making the picture vivid. But the point is that the character of Widmerpool becomes clear through his activity - through running, which is solitary (Widmerpool is always an outsider), determined, but pursued without any great talent. Yet despite all this there is something almost majestic about him.

I love the idea of seeing people through their actions. This may be a bit sad but all the time I am looking at runners and making judgements. Mostly they are superficial, merely being about the way the body moves, whether it is fluid or stiff, elegant or clumsy. At other times you do catch glimpses of character, though you have no way of knowing if that flash of insight is accurate or not. However the activities we choose are never neutral, they all show something about us. For example you can never take up running if you hate being by yourself, as no matter how social you might be, running is mostly solitary. You also have to have a certain amount of doggedness run consistently and so it is the perfect activity to introduce Widmerpool who forms his own life purely through the force of will.

Yes running is only a small detail in the novels but it is cleverly chosen. I will however draw a veil over the ending where Widmerpool dies running naked, part of a crank sect.

We may run but we are not mean we have to be anything like him.