Running free felt so much better than being on a treadmill. It didn’t matter if I came last; no one was going to say that I’d failed. No one was going to judge me – not even me. The thought was immensely liberating.
I always put so much pressure on myself to be everything to everyone. Self-sufficiency had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Being capable, being the best meant people had left me to get on with it. I’d isolated myself. I never asked for help. It had to be forced upon me, like Hilda phoning Ash to help with the furniture. I’d never have admitted I couldn’t do it on my own.
It was the same at work. I’d backed myself into a corner. No one ever offered aid because they assumed I wouldn’t accept it or even that I didn’t need it. I never said no to projects or tasks because I didn’t want it to seem as if I couldn’t hack the challenge. When I’d first started, there’d been the thrill of helping small companies with business problems, dealing with real people and making a difference to their lives. Because I was good, I kept being given the bigger and bigger jobs, the bigger, faceless companies where the employees would have no idea of my impact on them. I’d become so focused on that steady treadmill, never lifting my head to take a good look around, that I’d lost sight of what I really liked about my work. For the first time, it occurred to me that I could get off the treadmill and run free.
Thinking about that spurred me on and, somehow, I’d caught up with the woman ahead of me and now tried to keep pace with her. She stretched out a little in response, pushing the pace, but I kept up with her stride for stride. I could see she was older than me and was panting just as hard as I was.
‘You okay?’ she asked with a face which I knew was as red and shiny as mine.
‘Yes… first… time,’ I puffed.
‘It gets easier. I… started… a year ago,’ she said between breaths. ‘Complete convert now. Just ran in the gym. Something about all this…’ She waved a hand to the surrounding woodland. ‘We’re all mad.’
I nodded, trying to conserve some energy as we ran along the flat path along the top of the ridge, going back past the opening in the trees where the stunning view unfolded. The early morning mist had cleared and now the scene showed just how high we’d climbed. The view from up here was amazing and it filled me with a quiet sense of joy, one I hadn’t felt for a long time. I’d been too focused on that damned treadmill.
‘Makes me feel glad to be alive when I see that,’ she said. ‘Every time.’
I knew what she meant
The path sloped upwards with a very small incline and I began to slow, the temptation to walk building.
‘Come on,’ urged the woman. ‘You can do it. The worst is over.’
‘Promise?’ I panted and she laughed – or a close approximation to it.
We ran side by side, our harsh breaths punctuating the morning air and whenever I started to slow, she slowed with me, keeping me going. Then, mercifully, we crested the hill and hit the steep descent. It was heaven, running free down there, letting my legs carry me, my arms flapping loosely by my sides.
‘Told you it would get easier.’
‘Thank God,’ I replied. We zigzagged down the hill, coming back to the obelisk and a crossroad of four paths. The same cheery marshal now had Elvis’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’ pumping out. Like the men at the airports who directed planes into their spots, he gave us a two-handed wave towards the path on the right.
Not far now, I told myself. ‘Don’t let me hold you back,’ I wheezed to my kind companion.
‘It’s fine. I’m not aiming for a PB or anything. I’m always grateful just to get around.’
I let the words sink in for a minute.
‘Can I… ask… why you… do it?’
‘Sure,’ she gave me a quizzical look and I hastily reassured her.
‘I’m here… some friends and I… want to set up a parkrun’—my chest was heaving with the effort. Running, talking, and breathing at the same time was hard work—‘in our local area. Fact-finding mission.’
‘Ah. That’s brilliant. Good luck. It’s transformed my life.’ She waggled one of her hands in front of her, sporting a tasteful solitaire engagement ring. ‘I met my partner here.’
‘Really?’ Hilda would love that.
‘Yes. I’d been divorced for nine years. Never thought I’d meet anyone again.’ She laughed wheezily. ‘Thought I was destined to be a crazy cat-lady.’ We ran a few strides before she picked up the story again. ‘My neighbour begged me to come and help marshal one weekend because they were short of volunteers. I came up… saw that there were plenty of women just like me here. Not stick-thin runnery types.’ She flashed me a grin. ‘So I decided to have a go. Never run in my life. Nearly killed me the first couple of times.’ With a laugh she swerved to avoid a branch on the path, ‘But… it got me out of the house. I was last the first couple of weeks.’
I pulled a sympathetic face.
She waved a hand. ‘Someone has to be. Everyone was so friendly. Nice about it. Even though I was a complete duffer.’ She ran a few more paces, clearly trying to conserve her oxygen levels. ‘I came back the next week. Then the next.’ There was another pause before, with a proud beam, she added, ‘I’ve done seventy now.’
‘That’s… amazing.’ I gasped between breaths.
‘Over the weeks I got chatting to a couple of people. A woman invited me to go to the coffee place afterwards. I met Phil. Chatted to him every week for months.’ Her smile was rueful. ‘He’s a slow burner. Eventually he invited me out for dinner. The rest is history.’
‘Wow,’ I huffed, ‘that’s a lovely story.’
‘’Tis for me,’ she grinned.
I realised that as she’d been talking we’d unconsciously began to run faster and we were fairly pelting down the hill.
At the bottom, we burst out of the trees head-on into the wind.
‘Not far now.’
The finish line was just over the next hill and with that in mind, I forced myself to dig deep and run as hard as I could up the short, steep slope following the other woman. A competitive gene had kicked in and I was determined to keep going.
Up over the hill we went and then it was there, a hundred metres ahead.
‘Come on!’ yelled my companion, plunging down the hill like a kamikaze pilot. ‘Sprint finish.’
I went flying after her, trying as hard as I could to catch her. The finish line loomed closer. I pushed my body harder, my lungs bursting. Then just before the finish, the woman slowed and turned. ‘We go over together.’
And, in an extraordinarily generous gesture, we crossed the line at exactly the same time.
And that was the moment I fell in love with the parkrun. The moment when I decided that we would find the three thousand pounds. We would set something up that would encourage people like this lady to come out and take part, something that would give people like the lovely guy with the boom box a job to do every Saturday. We would set something up that would make Ash and me proud of what we’d achieved. We were going to set up the Churchstone parkrun.