I planned to run yesterday. There are two strategies I use to stick to such a plan: one is to tell someone I’ll be going out for a run and the other (if I’m working from home) is to get up and get dressed into my running gear straightaway, without having a shower, so I’m ready to trot off at any time.
Reader, I did not go for my run. I had deadlines and chores, the weather was a bit iffy, I felt sluggish, and generally I just couldn’t be bothered. I managed a couple of quick walks round the village, but otherwise spent the whole day at my desk in an uncomfortable sports bra. The best exercise I managed was wrangling this off at bedtime.
I’m currently reading Rachel Hewitt’s incredible book, In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors. I was blown away by the introduction, in which Hewitt deftly blends historical research on women in sport with her personal experiences of loss and grief, as well as searing commentary on what it means to be active and female in the twenty-first century. She writes beautiful passages describing her own trail running, detailing the long-distance routes she takes across the northern landscapes of England and the effects – painful, strengthening, liberating – that sustained physical movement has on her mind and body.
I am a runner of sorts, but tend towards short distances. I like a run I can finish in the half hour between meetings. Twenty minutes is even better. I have completed half-marathons in the past and enjoyed the challenge of training and the camaraderie and spectacle of race day, but I have never been tempted by anything longer. I don’t find much transcendental pleasure in pushing on through tiredness and I get a bit bored. My approach has always been ‘the faster I go, the quicker it’s over.’ If I tackled a full marathon, when would I have lunch? I fear I fall into Hewitt’s category of naïve sceptic – her own stance when she first moved north and took up trail running – who looks at long-distance enthusiasts and thinks ‘Mad. Crazy!’.
But there are times I crave the kind of connection to body and place that Hewitt shows can come with extended exertion in the outdoors: the ‘exhaustion, elation, contentment, hunger, thirst, nausea, pleasure and pain’. I sometimes have night dreams of snowboarding, my unconscious mind taking me to the space where I feel most alive, exhilarated and at ease in my limbs. I have thought about finding something that might replicate these feelings in the flatlands of West Oxfordshire, where snow-covered mountains are rare, and the only alternative I have come up with is orienteering; but this is altogether too organised for my liking. I want to be able to choose my own moments to take off and crave finding my own unique directions.
I wonder as well if I have taken more to covering ground by walking in recent years because this makes sense to me in my current stage of life. I think a lot about ageing as a process that follows us throughout life, not just towards its end. In my forties, I have convinced myself that walking and yoga are all I need to keep myself healthy. That striding and stretching rather than sweating and jarring are what my body needs right now. I suspect this isn’t quite true, and that the efficient gains in cardiovascular fitness delivered by running are a fact I may want to pay attention to again soon.
But I’m soothed by the other book I’m reading at the moment, which is a long-distance endeavour in its own right. In Doris Lessing’s epic exploration of female creativity, The Golden Notebook* (which comes in at nearly 600 pages), bodies are as important as they are to Hewitt in her celebration of pioneering sporting women. The writer protagonist Anna spends a lot of time reflecting on her corporal state and her changing female physicality. This is a quote from the book that I first encountered in The Artist’s Way and that inspired me to pick up the novel: ‘all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh.’ Although I may not be taking to the trails to experience the thrill of a long run right now, I can still delight in more modest movement. I have noted Lessing’s lines down and they accompany me through this year of walking.
*I love this project about women reading The Golden Notebook, from about 15 years ago
Really love this piece, Als - not least because I think the potential connections between writers/writing and exercise/using the body are too often neglected by the (outdated, probably-never-the-case) assumption that being ‘bookish’ and ‘sporty’ are mutually exclusive… Come to think of it, the whole premise of your blog defies that false opposition. Write / walk on!