Running and the Waste Land.

Finally, it is getting to the point where if I miss a day of running, I long for it.  Yesterday was that day, and I just felt like something vital was missing.  And it wasn't like I'd forgotten to pack a lunch or to post a letter or something - not anything I could blithely put off until tomorrow or find an alternative solution to - I was missing a fundamental part of my day: now, arguably, my favourite part of the day.

It used to be that when I thought of running, I felt the lactic acid in my legs and the pain in my chest even before I'd gotten out of bed.  I would think to myself, "Well surely there can be nothing worse I could get out of bed for" but now, my first thoughts are of blue sky, oxygen, smiling at fellow runners along Regent's Canal and my grand, self-gratifying sprint finish at the end.  And I'm not sure what has changed.  Is it the weather?  My new trainers?  A new level of fitness?  In the past I have known exactly why I was running, whether it was to lose weight, maintain general fitness or, most recently, in a battle against the numbness of depression.  Confusingly, now that I have no definite reason to be lacing up my trainers and plugging into my Nike running app (it's free and brilliant) I am even happier to be out there and, ultimately, evermore perplexed.

I've read a stream of articles asking "why do we run?" and am glad to see that I am not alone in being incapable of answering this question.  In my opinion, the closest we've got to the essence of it is Adharanand Finn's book Running With the Kenyans (a brilliant read even if you have no interest in running).  After reading it, what made me put my trainers on and dart out into one of 2012's few days of sunshine was the impression that there's just something innately right about running.  It's in the bounce of your feet, the inward and outward breath, the swing of your arms.  It feels like it harks from some primal survival instinct and living in Central London, I desperately yearn for any reminder that I am in fact human.  In any city or town it is easy to become blurred with the tube, the bus, your computer or coffee machine and although these are stunning examples of the evolutionary capabilities of man, we should not be mistaken for likewise inorganic matter.  Without spiralling into too much of a digression here on the effects of Modernism I will briefly turn to T.S Eliot, who described this outlook accurately in his 1922 poem, The Waste Land:

"Unreal city

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet."

In Eliot's poem I wish that the 'Sighs, short and infrequent' could refer to a herd of marathon runners, his eyes fixed 'before his feet' out of exhaustion, willing himself to keep going.  But, I think it is fair to say that the 'unreal city' alone is exhausting enough.  Indeed, enduring the inhuman demands of the modern day is plenty reason to sigh and stare through the brown fog.  Somewhat akin to this, the reason I didn't get to run was simply that I was too busy.  I walked home in the evening and watched as the clock on King's Cross Station moved from 9:05pm to 9:10pm, slowly and tauntingly.  I stood still at a pedestrian crossing, my legs twitching to bob up and down, yearning for my hair to be sticking out on end with sweat on my forehead and flushed red cheeks.  I wanted the coolness of air in the back of my throat, the emptiness of thought in my mind and the happy quickness of pulse.  I wanted to dart across that road, different to any other pedestrian, leaving them behind in full knowledge that I was enduring something sensational.

Now, a lot of people tell me that running is actually bad for you.  These are the same people who don't eat carbohydrates, fats or sugars and only lift weights for 30 minutes a day because should you dare to work out for a second longer, your muscle will devour itself and the Universe will implode.  In light of this nonsense I tend to retort that it depends on your technique in running: without going into great detail here, there are certain styles that are proven to be better for your joints and muscles.  To this one friend then replied, "Well actually, cardio-vascular exercise is bad for you full stop" and I couldn't help but think...when is anything going to be good for us?  And, furthermore, when will we stop having the true requirements of our bodies dictated to us?  If the future of fitness and well-being is synchronised dumbbell lifting in set reps to a strict time, we are just as doomed as the crowd in T.S Eliot's poem.  For me, running evokes freedom.  It is the primal urge to live that we are so often lacking in the rest of our lives that I hope, unlike everything else, is never taken too seriously.