Running

I have started to run again. Running is something that returns to my life when there is something to run away from - usually boredom. Through forests in rural Germany during my afternoon hour off from looking after a clutch of small boys; through cobbled streets and graveyards at daybreak in my university town after an all nighter. As a teenager during study leave, when I wanted a rush of endorphins to accompany thinking of all the places I would have sex during my post-GCSE summer. (Spoiler: nowhere.) A decade of runs and their respective playlists flood slowly back down the quiet streets of West London, to plod beside me for my state-mandated hour of escape from my mother’s home.

Running in this neighbourhood is running through a labyrinth of memories. I run past the town hall into which I proudly strode age 18 to donate my blood to be told that it had taken too long and I should not bother doing it again. (I never have.) Past the Labour HQ where I found myself on the phone to a teacher the night before my first general election, and past the church hall where I smugly marked my vote. Past the corner shops where I bought illicit alcohol, and the chicken shop where I bought illicit nuggets. Past the sloping driveway of my oldest friend’s childhood home, whose brother was my first MSN Messenger flirtation age 13. He is now 30.

I run alongside the river at golden hour, which is incredibly beautiful and inconveniently narrow. Down blossom-laden streets where I rolled in three pairs of socks and my neighbour’s sister’s skates. I run beside the tiny artificial waterfall in Chiswick Business Park which security guards would yell at us for scrambling across, and past the bench where I had my very unsuccessful first kiss with my first boyfriend who was my first secondary school friend’s first cousin.

I am not a runner, and therefore rarely leave the two mile radius around the Russian Orthodox Church that loomed over my childhood. Its bulbous dome is reassuring company on most of my runs, silhouetted at a distance against rooftops and heavy grey cloud, blinding me with reflections of the final hour of evening sun, thrusting overhead in a frame of leafy green like a radiated mushroom. Catching my breath in the shadow of its bulk I realise that I’ve never actually been inside.

At the power-walking start of a run I turn down the narrow side passage that hugs the side of the flyover, the roar of traffic overhead that soundtracked my growing up now just an occasional fly-by. This alley was a source of terror to me when I was younger; a ghoulish child who loved to scare herself I used to lie in bed and think about its horrible existence a ten minute walk away. I’d imagine the terrible thing that lurked just round the bend where the eye couldn’t quite reach - the same Buffy The Vampire Slayer monster caught onscreen over the shoulder of a friend’s babysitter that stalked my nightmares for many years. As I approach the shadowiest point of the passage there is a familiar feeling that starts to creep up my stomach. I notice doors to back gardens that I did not remember being there, an overhang of dry vines large enough to hide a crouching person, and suddenly I’m aware of my breath accelerating into gulps and my heart pounding against my chest and I break into a clumsy sprint for the 5 seconds it takes to burst out into a deserted sun-bathed cul-de-sac. I look back down the 50 metre passage and feel ridiculous - this won’t happen tomorrow. (Tomorrow a father is teaching his son to cycle down the alley, and suddenly there’s a danger that’s no longer in my head. I change my route and keep my pride.)

Even as I navigate my palace of the past, I feel better after I run. I feel better before I run, knowing that I will be able to listen to huge club hits for 25 minutes straight and look at well-tended front gardens under golden hour, while an American woman tells me how proud I should be of myself. Running will make my body better at doing the things I like doing with it, like playing football and having sex. But also I know that running is a temporary pursuit. I run when I am unable to spend that time the way I would like to spend it - when it’s the only possible respite from sitting inside, whatever or wherever the inside is.

When lockdown ends I do not doubt that my running will as well. When I run now I wonder when and where my next period of running will be thrust upon me; in an ideal world, it never will be.