. . . running stories
AT FIRST I RAN to music. Because that is what you do. You hear on the running grapevine that it’s imperative to pick songs with a beat, songs that will help you power on, even when what you mostly feel like doing is collapsing on the nearest park bench. Songs such as Eye of the Tiger, obviously. The more sledgehammer-obvious the message, the better. Songs with a beat. Songs that inspire. Songs that push you through that final kilometre, or at least to the next lamp post.
But I discovered during my fledgling runs that these songs did nothing for me. It turned out I preferred moving to musicals. I shuffled along the streets of the West End, I slow jogged across Broadway. I was looking for distraction on every corner from Oz to Oliver’s London. I fired up the soundtrack to Wicked and ran to Defying Gravity, which worked for a while. I ran until the songs I loved started to grate on my ears. And then, through a colleague who was having the same problem with the combination of music and running, I found my preferred running mate: that unexpected but utterly reliable pacemaker, the spoken word.
So now I find myself running to short stories. Audio fiction from the New Yorker read by writers of note. My favourites have been Anne Enright’s reading of John Cheever’s perfect story The Swimmer. And Roddy Doyle reading his relative Maeve Brennan’s heart-clenchingly lovely Christmas Eve. Every other day, Colum McCann reads me Bluebell Meadow by Omagh’s Benedict Kiely – a story of a Catholic girl and a Protestant boy. I can’t stop listening to that one, finding something fresh and beautiful to marvel at every time.
I shuffle along, the words floating around my ears, as rich and rewarding as the best music. On every run though, there is some dilemma to be tackled, an issue interrupting the narrative. On my last outing, I found myself debating whether to pass out the person walking in front of me or whether to hover, breathing heavily, behind him. If I pass out the walker, they might think that I think I am something special, running along this narrow path in the Phoenix Park listening to stories from the New Yorker.
“Look, I know I am nothing special”, I want to say as I pass by, but now they are behind me and all I have time for is an apologetic glance back. I wish I could jog behind the walkers forever, but even I am not slow enough for that, so I pass them out and I feel as though I am pretending to be someone else. A method actor preparing for the role of a runner. It still doesn’t feel like something I would do. It is still shockingly out of character.
I wanted a running mate to bring me back to myself. I didn’t want Bonnie Tyler telling me she needed a hero or Springsteen rasping that I was born to run. Instead, I listen to the stories that take me somewhere else, transport me from the monotony of what I am doing, dropping me into a world where characters lie under trees, or fish for fat trout, or swim and drink their way across the neighbourhood. Every story, a journey, a path worth following.
Still, it turns out I don’t like running. Seven weeks later, having gone from one-minute runs to 20-minute long runs, I still don’t think much of it. And that’s fine. One day, I picked up a book called Run Fat Bitch Run by Ruth Field. I picked it up in order to be offended. “What an offensive title,” I sniffed, but then I found myself laughing. It was as though Field, also a mother of twins, had written this book for me. She says this exercise lark is not necessarily enjoyable. She says “difficult” is the new black. She says things I don’t necessarily agree with and she says things I don’t want to hear. Mostly, she talks a lot of sense.
“There is an obvious connection between lack of motivation to exercise and general disarray in other areas of your life,” she says, which rings a cathedral load of bells for me. She says get off the couch and get out the door. So I do. Four times a week. I stick on the earphones and I escape, and most of the time, truth be told, the only bit I actually enjoy is the bit when it is all over. It almost makes the whole irritating business worthwhile.
So I run and I breathe and I listen to the stories. There are always lines I miss, because I am engaged in a running battle with myself most of the time. “I am going to stop now,” I tell myself all the time. “No, you are not,” I say back to myself. “Look, I am just not a running person,” I complain. “Come on, just go to that tree and then maybe to the next one after that,” I reply. “Oh, alright then,” I acquiesce, returning to the voices, picking up the threads of the story, plodding on down the track.
Without the stories, I don’t think I could do it. Stories with a beat. Stories that inspire. Stories that keep pushing me forward, keeping my mind on whatever it is that is going to happen next.
In other news ... two of Dublin northside’s best kept secrets join forces on Monday for fashion shows in aid of the Irish Cancer Society, with boutique Quack + Dirk being hosted by near neighbour Kennedy’s Food Store in Fairview. Tickets, €15 including a glass of wine, from kennedysfoodstore.com and quackanddirk.ie. Fashion shows begin at 6.30pm and 8.45pm.