The Runner

I became a runner in my thirties.  But it was always in my genes and in my blood.  With Dad's gleaming eyes and love of sport -- the two sparked together -- I always had it in me, the aspiration waiting to burgeon.  One day I thought, hell I've got to get out to run, and so I ran -- a stately fifteen minutes. 

 

Over the years I got out more and more.  Then, finally, I met my big athletic dream.  I had money.  I had self-esteem (more than I'd had before).  And Hannah, my sister, had agreed on a trip to Nepal to do some trekking.  We did a seventeen day hike around the Annapurna circuit, and then I later went alone to Jiri, from where I walked to Everest base camp and back.  This second hike took me twenty days and included an attempted summit of Island peak.  I failed that attempt because of strong winds, and to be honest, I think a weak body -- possibly a weak heart -- from pushing myself as hard as I could.  The bad omen of my guide not being able to light the flame offering to the mountain spirits at about 1:45am, as we left camp, probably also went against me, for it was he who called the climb off at around 7am.  What I gained from these hikes was an inner physical strength and fitness, which I decided I was going to maintain.  Even after my two seizures, one a few days back from the mountains, and one a week later after dancing until the early hours in Thailand, I was determined to be a physical man. 

 

Well, I've lived a good life.  And I'm satisfied.  Everything now is in some ways superfluous.  What more could I learn beyond that we get highs, and then we get highs thinking about them, and then we die.  And in between there's a lot of suffering.  The big wide-eyed sadness of living.  I suppose I could learn to be a little kinder.  Is that not what someone said on their deathbed -- 'Be a little kinder.'  Well I could learn that. 

 

What I want to do now is get one last high from running.  I mean, just run until I die.  I've seen majestic stars thrown across the sky.  I've had elicit love.  I've had friendship.  I've done clasping for people and things.  I've lived my dream, hiking in Nepal.  I've shown people I'm smart, getting my First Class Honours Degree in Humanities with Philosophy, and arguing with logic while maintaining the tenacity of a cornered rat.  I've held a hand in the cinema.  I've been rich enough to be rich in my own mind -- enough for it to affect my self-esteem.  It seems that, perhaps, finally, 'there is nothing new under the sun' for me.  Dylan Thomas said, 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'.  I want to run into Nirvana.

 

I have nice red shoes.  I'm even strong enough now to wear bright red.  I stand out and I'm not ashamed.  I'm proud with my red shoes, tightly laced so that the shoes become my feet.  My skimpy blue swimming shorts are my running shorts.  They're a little high up the thigh.  I dare say I'm sexy.  My black vest hangs a bit baggy.  It should be tight.  Instead it slips down a bit, down my back.  But my growing biceps and smooth rounded shoulders still get a show.  I look good, like a soldier.  I have a strong man's beard; a serious man's brow; a well chiselled face.  In some ways, I have a mean look.  I could be mean if I really had to be -- not cruel -- but I wouldn't choose it.  Like I said, I've heard people say, “Be a little kinder”.  Well, here I stand with my water pack on.  I want this one last run to be a good one.  You can't do that without water.  I'm looking into the mirror and all in all I'm feeling good.

 

It's a strange thing to do, I know.  I don't want to fizzle out.  I don't want to burn up.  I want to blow up and out.  Let this be one last big fantastic run into the arms of God, who I've missed, and yet I have always been carried somehow by something beyond me, some bubble of protection.  Yeah, it really seems like that.  And today I'm writing how it seems.  So I'm going to run to Him.  Run to the big father and mother.  Run to the twinkling stars, and the deer’s slurp by the lakeside.  Run into the infinite.  One last high.

 

I'm putting my pen down now.  Fair thee well fellow travellers on the road.  I had a good life.  I'm having a good life.  If God doesn't take me now, I'll devote my life to something greater than myself.  I've got all I need for myself.  Fair thee well.

 

~ Robert put his pen  and notebook down.  He looked one last time at the photos of his Mum and Dad, and his other close friends and family.  I might be some time, he joked to himself, thinking of the guy on Captain Scot's expedition to the south pole.  He couldn't quite remember his name right now.  He decided to kneel before a small statue of the Buddha on his mantle piece.  It felt good to touch his feet, his knees, the palms of his hands, and finally his forehead on the mauve carpet.  He captured that religious sense of wonderment and detachment from everything and reverence for the unknowable -- the Dao?  That from which everything springs.  He did not have to believe in a cosmic mind of any sort.  He just knew that there was so much that we don't know.  How could we?   And that was the place to which he was running.

 

He turned the key, pushed down and pulled on the door handle, and stepped out over the bottom of the door frame.  A run begins with a plod.  Lifting the stiff legs, heavy in slumber, falling onto the outstretched leg, the gentle easing down of the body onto the cold supporting muscles.  The drop and lift.  The purposeful swing of the arms.  The focus of the mind upon the road ahead and beneath one's soles.  This was going to be a long run, so there was no need to start out fast.  One or two miles like this in the sun, and the muscles would be limbered up.  The water bag rocked a little, but not much, it being strapped tight over Roberts shoulders and clipped in twice, once drawing the shoulder straps in towards his chest, and once to hold the bag in tight to his middle back.  It was 2:01 in the afternoon.  The heat of the day was upon him.  A hot English summer day of twenty-eight degrees Celsius.  He wasn't going to get heat exhaustion in this if he drank adequately.

 

Into the town he ran, past the shoppers seeking entertainment and the buzz of a buy.  They looked happy enough in their summer dress -- tight vested muscle men, young mothers in mini-skirts, older mothers in summer dresses, or shorts, grease-on-shirt working fathers, beer and grass stained football shirts on growing boys and men, little princesses in pink sandals.  He delighted in these sights.  One last run, he again thought to himself.  From the city centre it was a skip and a throw to the harbour along the face of which he ran the cobbled road, past the afternoon drinkers, safe in the shade of the table umbrellas and from the thoughts of the working week.  Some would be nursing hangovers from a Saturday night out on the town -- the revelry of drunken flirtations and succumbings to the jungle beats put to the modern worlds casing.  Robert had run this harbour so many times, where at one corner bikers stood and ate hotdogs and burgers, and drank the smooth Captain Jasper's hot chocolate.  The big softies, with their leathers lain over big bike handlebars, bellies softly protruding from under stained white vests, specks of chocolate and sauce wiped on jeans.  They were a happy bunch, having found their world of belonging, and Robert ran on in his.

 

Up to the Hoe, the incline forcing the head down a little and the lean in towards it.  The pleasure of surmounting this obstacle was still there.  Up to the lighthouse, and he could look out to the sea, Drake's island, and a number of sailing boats and canoes -- even a warship out on the horizon, upon which, he mused, sailors must be bare-chested in the sunlight, happy in their sense of duty and, again he thought, belonging.  Funny to think how this sense of belonging had eluded him so long.  But when it came, it came in force.  His life came together, with work, and respect in the eyes of others, and adventure -- the adrenalin that capped his life.  But he'd kind of done it all now.  It wasn't that he didn't belong. 

 

Down from the lighthouse, along the curling seafront road, to run on through the docks and Union street, where many a pub crawl would ensue, and many a desperate housewife, or gay sailor, would find his “bit of alright.”  This area had grown a bit forlorn; a bit seedy, and battered, as the façades of the shops, flats, and nightclubs showed.  Robert had never found much here, back when he'd tried to find it, wandering around drunken, semi-ecstatic, but alone.  However, he'd once sat alone in a pounding bar-come-nightclub, when two submariners introduced themselves. They bought him drinks and invited him along to a stripclub.  Here a beautiful blonde sat on his lap and talked of her exhibitionism of a night out in Newquay town.  Apparently, there were “rules” prohibiting her from expressing herself in a club like this.  Then one of the submariners handed him ten pounds towards a dance with another woman.  Well it was a kind of alright dance, but that first blonde was hot, literally so, sitting on and leaning back with her wavy hair upon his face, and her hot breath.  So he mused, as he ran on out past plush boats being readied for the rich.

 

Forty-five minutes into his run, Robert got to the first real strain -- a one in eight hill --up past terraced houses and quiet house fronts, with only a few households or loners remaining in bricked shade.  Houses lined the road either side as Robert went up in the centre of the one-way road, keeping his ears peeled and legs ready to bounce to the less even paving to the right.  “Good afternoon, son,” an old gent mumbled, head down and then turning his whole body to watch the masochism of a hot afternoon swift climb of such a geographical feature -- so the old geography teacher thought. 

 

One minute nineteen! Robert exclaimed silently, I think that's the second fastest I've ever run up here before.  Still I can't burn myself out now.  I've got to make it until at least 8pm.

 

Robert settled into a slower pace again, up towards his mother's home -- the inspirational woman who'd raised twelve kids.  Sometimes he popped in for tea or Red Bush (South African tea), and chatted to his wise mother for an hour or two, before jogging on home.  In recent years they'd become closer.  When he got to the corner, looking down the street towards the warmth of home, he turned his head and faced east.  He ran on out towards Home Park, where as a child he'd watched Plymouth Argyle with his Dad and brothers.  The first game he'd seen was a birthday treat -- a pre-season friendly between Argyle and Red Star Belgrade.  The score, he remembered, was two all. 

 

Wow, I'm a different person.  A cliché if spoken; a wonder when thought.  What is identity anyway?  The atoms are all changed.  The mind is influenced by a multitude more concerns and memories.  Even the same causal factors -- concepts like 'Mum', 'Dad,' and 'Freedom' -- they are not made up of the same basic cognitions of baby-faced youth.  

Robert, starting to feel full-flow in his running, thought it might have been Kant who said that memory was the, or one of the, essential ingredients of identity.  

I feel I can say that I'm not that boy who went to that football match twenty-six years ago.  At least only a bit of that boy is still in me.  So, am I responsible for what that boy did?  The old identity has almost been subsumed by infinite overlappings of detail.  Can I take credit for anything that boy was?  A mere flow of time on matter.  

Then Robert thought, I guess in some ways a river is an entity -- the equivalent of an identity, perhaps, for non-conscious flows of energy and matter -- it all depends how you carve it all up with language.  

The breathing was becoming more and more necessarily rhythmic now.  Not strained but keeping time with his strides, with one hour sixteen minutes gone from the time he left his flat.  He decided to break off this particular train of thought and look around him.

 

He was heading out fast on the road to pass the turning for Derriford Hospital, where he'd been to see a neurologist a few times about his health issues post Nepal hikes.  He didn't want to dwell on such thoughts, and anyway this was an ugly part of the city.  He intended to get out past Roughborough, with its big Tesco money-machine, and on close to Yelverton, where he could dip out onto the moors, and run and run.

 

By four eighteen Robert was running out on soft but bumpy moorland turf.  Out away from the city and traffic he could afford to drop his pace and settle into a trot, which he hoped to maintain for quite a few more hours.  He sucked on his water pipe, guzzling down water which had been jostling on his back for the last few hours.  He thought of a wise man, cross-legged on some Arabian mat, sucking minted apple shisha, chatting of medieval poetry, and eating dates.  Damn, he should have taken dates! 

 

Dartmoor was burnt and hard up on the hills but soft and boggy in the lower parts.  Robert began to get adrenalin pangs of both excitement and dread.  He was heading out over tors (stony hill-tops) in the direction of Exeter.  After a while he stopped caring about the direction, other than to keep away from houses, people, and cars.  Amongst the steadfast but battered gorse bush and the resolute ponies he ran.  This was when he felt most alive, battling the sun, feeling the reward in sweat and pain.  He could feel the gentle breeze of early evening but at five thirty-two the sun still shone bright.  Now, he imagined the terrain before him of this early evening until sunset, which would be at about nine eleven, if the online table was right.  By half nine he'd be in the dark.  This was a journey into the night.

 

Robert involuntarily considered this mental journey ahead of him, to be reinforced with steady toes and heels over unsteady ground.  The journey was in his mind, and then actualized in body.  This journey into darkness.  He thought, didn't Bertrand Russell say that matter was more mind and mind more matter than most people thought.  Yeah, that seems right.  The matter means nothing without my mind, and my mind... well.  Here I am, locked in my mind, chemicals and sensations being pumped into it -- concepts interplaying (they themselves some kind of phenomena out of patterns of matter, perhaps) -- I make the assumption of an external world.  I'm obliged to.  Ah, Ryle would turn in his grave at the mention of external verses internal, wouldn't he?  Robert never thought one could get much insight -- well not often -- from such philosophical conjuring, other than euphoric perceptions of being -- some untranslatable experience.

 

At five thirty-eight, Robert had a heavy stumble, his left leg buckled out to the left, as he traversed around a hill to his right.  He'd been running for over three and a half hours now.  He guessed he was over twenty-two miles into his run.  He momentarily had to steady himself on a rock with his left hand, which itself gave way a little, and he thumped his elbow into granite.  Ouch!  Water came to his eyes.  He didn't stop, imagining a crowd of spectators.  It's nothing.  No pain at all, he pretended, and rushed up and around the slope, with a thud developing a gentle but painful rhythm in his elbow -- a little fire.  He bit his teeth and fired on up the hill.

 

Up on a bit higher ground, he could see that below there were sheep grazing, and a lake in the shade of a tor, surrounded by scattered fir trees.  A couple of rooks were flying back to their rookery somewhere.  He ran on with this view for a while.  He checked his watch.  It was six forty-two.  On flat ground he'd have run well over a marathon by now.  He couldn't work out how far he had run this day.

 

For some reason, an old hippie he'd met in Thailand years ago came to mind.  He remembered he'd been walking through a small island jungle with his then girlfriend.  They were on their way back from one side of the island to the other, where they were staying in some kind of beach hut.  They were fooling in the jungle, ambling back slowly, and then the wavy grey haired hippie came striding up on them, from a long way back at first, but he was soon upon them.  Robert had offered him one of his last three cigarettes, this being back when he smoked, and the wanderer had said, “Let's wait for a good spot to smoke this.  You should always smoke your final cigarette somewhere beautiful.”  Robert imagined retelling the story to perhaps some bar room stranger.  

We trotted on to find a rock out on some sand, with the lapping sea fifty yards away.  It was a good adjunct to our day.  You think you've come to the end of a good day, and then...

 

Robert started to get a little dizzy.  He didn't have many thoughts after that.  Within twelve seconds his breath had drawn in, and a black had enveloped him.  It was seven twelve.  He'd been running a hard run, over impertinent terrain, for over five hours.  He normally felt comfortable running eight or so miles.  Sixteen miles would be a very long run.  Though Robert's plan had been to run and then, if necessary walk and run, into the night, heaven had intervened. 

 

The breath was sucked in, in one shrill shriek.  The muscles all went tort, and shook and rocked against each other, fighting for automated dominance.  The head fell back, the mind gone.  The body fell back, Robert smashing his head on a rock, causing a bleeding wound; there was a softer graze on his shoulder.  He lay shaking for less than a minute.  Then he was still, enveloped in an early darkness.  Too early to die in some minds.  Robert himself had thought that he'd lived a good life, all in all.  It really did seem that the dark emphasised the brilliance of those blessed moments of his life; drunk and encased in a bubble of pleasure and protection from unwanted fear, or high on the mountain air and scenery of his childhood dreams.  He'd tasted his childhood dreams, and from then on he knew it was all repetition.  The magic could only grow less and less, the lamp dimmer and dimmer.

 

When you climb a mountain for ego, even if you do surmount the challenge, you have to do it again and again and again, and preferably bigger and better. That's what's in the mind of the climber.  So he'd read in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  This too was a kind of slavery, he once said. 

Reviews

[dlstrand]

I'm not a runner. I hate running. It's monotonous, pounding painful torture, highlighted by burning fire breathed into my lungs. So the fact that I read this story to the end, shows something of your ability.
You've created a compelling tale. I don't have specific notes for you, except to ask you to please keep writing.
Well done.

[Joshua Knight]

Thank you very more much. I'm glad it was readable :)