Two years ago, after encouragement from my partner, I joined a running club. As a freelancer, and someone who spends most of my time alone, getting to run with a few others and make friends was a lot of fun. But sometime in the early summer last year, I stopped going because I wasn’t enjoying it any longer.
I was finding it harder and harder to identify with the other runners, which made it difficult to make friends. I realised I had also started to spend every club meet masking, which exhausted me before I’d even ran five yards. Things came to a head when, when socialising with a few members, conversation turned to what races we were all entering. When I said I wasn’t planning on entering any, and might never do so again, instead of accepting my decision, I found myself suddenly placed under peer pressure, constantly being egged on to sign up for a race.
This didn’t go on for five or ten minutes, it happened repeatedly, until closing time, and I found the very nature of the incident left me questioning why I even run at all.
I spent the remainder of the year on my solo runs asking myself that same question over and over again, and the almost instinctive response to it was that I have a desire to move my body. If I don’t run for a few days I start to become fidgety and agitated, and after being a runner for more than 10 years I understand that this agitation comes from my mind, and not my body. Physical exercise is directly beneficial to my mental health, which is why I will keep running until my body eventually prevents me from doing so, however long that may be.
More than this, I’ve realised that the thing I enjoy more than anything about running is that it gives you a reason to be outside and in nature. On my runs this year I stopped caring about my speed or my distance, and started being more engaged by what’s around me: the flow of the river, the sound of wind blowing through leaves, the sight of a Yellow Wagtail skimming the surface of a canal in search of insect-snacks. On the best days I would always see the same heron at a pond near my house, and when it was just the two of us I would just stop and observe it for a while. Running, for me, had become secondary to being outside, but it was the key motivator in terms of how and why I got there in the first place.
Late last year I took a final step in this action, and tentatively stopped logging my runs on Strava. While I have always enjoyed seeing my stats and figures, I realised that this app has a habit of dictating how I run in the same way that earlier conversation attempted to dictate where I run. I’m also sick and tired of the apparent need to log and gamify every experience I have, and have ultimately decided that running, from now on, will be on my terms, and not an apps.
Today I removed Strava from my phone. I was worried for a while that without my data, and my PBs, I might somehow be less of a runner. But that’s very silly isn’t it. You’re a runner regardless of how fast or how far you move your body. If you need me you can find me in a field, on a hillside or by a river. I might be running, but I might just be standing still and taking it all in, for a while at least.