Riga’s Kronvalda Park had taken on a Christmas-card look with icicles hanging from trees and the canal frozen solid. It was minus 14C so I’d lost the feeling in my hands but I ran on, crunching through the snow, avoiding black-ice patches and taking corners slowly.
“If you can walk on it, you can run on it,” was the motto I’d adopted. The park linked easily to other surrounding gardens, all ringed with theatres, kiosks, statues and churches, making for a scenic jog. I had been running for 40 minutes and soon I’d be back at my hotel, overlooking Vērmane Garden, in time for breakfast – Rīga’s famous sprats on dark rye bread – and a hot shower.
I thought of these restorative things as I ran on, nose dripping and leggings covered with sugary-looking frost. For my mini-break to Riga, I’d chosen the hotel, not on price, facilities or design, but for its location, specifically for its convenient access to parks. It had been – to risk sounding like a self-care influencer – quite “a journey” to get to that point.
Like many people, I had begun running during the lockdown. As a keen hill walker, and as someone who is not used to sitting in one place for long, when everyone had to be mindful about where we went, and with whom, I downloaded the NHS Couch to 5K app and tried running in my local park in Edinburgh. I failed miserably. I was shocked by how hard it was to run even a single kilometre. I could walk quite easily for hours up and down glens, tackling munros and the Corbetts on weekends, in all weathers. However, running hurt not only my thighs and calves, as I’d expected, but my shoulders, neck and arms. Every time I went out, my entire body screamed.
I quit. Tried again. Failed. Tried again. Quit. I’d chosen the comedian Sarah Millican as the voice of my coach on the app and felt guilty that I couldn’t do it, like I’d let myself down and Sarah too. Feeling stalled and hopeless, I gave up for a few months. Yet the running seed had been sown somewhere deep down, and I didn’t like the fact I couldn’t do it. It nagged me.
Later, released from lockdowns, my friend Noriko met me in Istanbul and, as we sat in the back of a taxi, inching through heavy traffic, I listened to her talk thoughtfully about her love of running and marathons. She explained how it helps her to feel free and how it is a mental game. A penny dropped. Isn’t running a bit like writing? You’ve got to have staying power. Got to hack it out. One word at a time. One step at a time.
I went home to Edinburgh newly determined, booking in for a gait analysis at a running shop, which was where I bought my first pair of proper trainers. Three times a week I went out with my headphones on, coached by the app, until one day, finally, I finished five kilometres in one go without walking. It may have taken me 34 minutes and umpteen attempts, but I had done it. Once I started going out regularly, Noriko would message on WhatsApp at weekends, when she would jog along the Bosphorus and I’d run down to Leith, past its encouraging motto “We Persevere” stencilled on to walls. “We ran together today,” she’d type. Having a running buddy, even a faraway one, proved a massive help.
I think I know why running became so popular during the lockdowns. Of course, it offered the chance of exercise and fresh air when we were cooped up, but it was also something that could be controlled, a way to impose some order upon our chaotic world. During a run, when that nice flow sets in, the only thing that matters is the activity and reaching your goal. Even when it is hard going, it is a relief. And there is a sense of egalitarianism about it: if you are physically able, you can put on a pair of trainers and run out of your front door. You don’t need a car, a team, or any expensive equipment.
On a work trip to London, I booked into a hotel by Regent’s Park. As planned, I set out for a sunrise run, and was met with dozens of other weekday joggers, some clad as though for a mountain climb with brightly coloured headbands and technical-looking vest packs. To my delight, I heard some terrific waking-up noises coming from the animals at London zoo. On Twitter, now also known as X, after my run, I asked the zookeepers for detail on the morning chorus I’d heard, and they replied: “It was likely to be our gibbons! Gibbons tend to sing in duets, so Jimmy will start and Yoda, his son, will respond.”
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The next significant milestone came during a visit to Poland. My trainers and running kit took up much of my carry-on luggage but, armed with a new Garmin watch, I had a dream to map runs around the Polish capital’s gorgeously landscaped parks. Jogging through Warsaw’s Saxon Garden, I went past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and its eternal flame, and I ran along the paths snaking through Łazienki park, surely one of the world’s most beautiful, in awe of its follies, fountains and pavilions. And then I did the same in Kraków.
It dawned on me that running had begun to change not only my body and mind, but the way I travelled. As well as choosing hotels close to green spaces, had become mindful of things like air quality and stray dogs. In Tbilisi, during an intense heatwave, I used a hotel gym treadmill, up on the 18th-floor, which had air-conditioning and wrap-around floor-to-ceiling windows for city views. With my fitness so hard won, I found myself scared to lose it, even if it meant paying to jog on the spot.
Bitten by the running bug, I soon ticked off another goal: a sunrise run in Istanbul. Before dawn, Noriko met me at my hotel in the Beyoğlu district and we walked to Galata Bridge, our starting point. There, in the dark, we did some stretches by the tram stop before setting off, going over the water and past the fishers smoking cigarettes, towards the Egyptian bazaar, with grand mosques either side; then through the crowds forming by the ferry terminal in Eminönü; and along Kennedy Avenue, following the old walls of the city as the ferries belched smoke above the Bosphorus.
As the sun rose further, the water turned from inky-black to blue glittering ribbons. Then we ran back again, and ended with a Turkish coffee by the docks in Karaköy, heady from the enjoyment of running together, not online but in real life. It was the first time I had ever run with another person.
Recently, I completed my first half-marathon, in Scotland. It went well, though I ended up with bad blisters on one toe from, I suspect, special marathon socks that were too tight. I took my swollen toe to a nurse. “It’s not infected but you do have runner’s feet,” she said, while dressing the wound. And rather than feel any of the usual shame at the state of my feet, I smiled inwardly, feeling a slightly pathetic but unmistakable stab of pride.
