SOLE ΤΟ SOUL

WHEN WE RUN, WE CONNECT WITH OUR SURROUNDINGS IN A UNIQUE AND MULTISENSORY WAY THAT BRINGS BENEFITS FOR US AND THE PLANET.

- SAM MURPHY

I CLOSE THE BACK GATE QUIETLY. I MOVE ALONG THE IVY-CLAD SIDE ALLEY AND REACH THE LANE, WHERE I LINGER WHILE MY SMARTWATCH SEEKS OUT A SATELLITE TO TRACE MY PROGRESS ACROSS THIS PATCH - MY PATCH - OF PLANET. AND THEN I'M OFF, MY FEET TAPPING OUT A RHYTHM AS FAMILIAR AS MY HEARTBEAT.

I settle into movement as my muscles warm and loosen, letting my internal compass guide the way. I’m not so much thinking as sensing. The bite of the east wind, the first trace of sweat on my skin, the rain-drenched tarmac gleaming like polished silver in the morning glare.

After a kilometre or so, I leave the road, clambering over a gate at the foot of a sloping field. The grass is springy, the earth softened by autumn showers but still firm enough for purchase. The hill quickens my breathing, asks a little more from my quads. From the top there’s a glimpse of the sea, if you know where to look, five kays distant. Sometimes it glints – a strip of foil sandwiched between land and sky. Today it’s a chunk of smudged lead pencil, and the gulls have flown inland to stab at the fields.

I follow the seams that crops have sewn on to this patchwork of green, sending nameless small creatures skittering into their burrows, to emerge on a gravel road just outside of town. Spirit-level flat. I pick up my pace, enjoying the sensation of “arms, breaths and heartbeats as multiples of one another”, as Bernd Heinrich puts it in his book Why We Run. I cross the imaginary finish line outside my house and stop, hands on thighs and gasping for breath, steaming like a triumphant racehorse and grinning from ear to ear.