I remember years ago a brief period of insomnia. I would get out of bed and walk out of the house and into the dark with no cause or aim because it was all I could think to do. And I remember, clearly, a line of some juvenile poetry I wrote after such an excursion - the night rain comes to me, like black spattered hope.
And I remember it now not because it meant anything in particular, but for the resounding clarity of that one, single image in that moment. I didn’t know why I should feel hopeful in such a desolate state, and I couldn’t put my finger on the source of the change, but I knew I felt better. And I knew it was connected with movement through an unlikely place at an uncommon time. I was simply moving through the world at night, watching the rain bounce and bead on my jacket, feeling the drops gather in my hair and stream down my face and listening to the gentle tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap...
Even now I can see myself there. And though I struggle to remember people I once knew and things I’m supposed to have done, I can still see myself on an unremarkable night, stopping under the pooled light of a streetlamp and looking up. And I can remember the words coming to me like raindrops tumbling through the blackness and into the light.
In this space I had found something.
Somehow I felt like it was all I would ever need.
There’s an unlikely symbiosis between running and writing, and the more I’ve done of each the more I’ve recognised why. Despite seeming at odds, not least in the fact that one requires stillness and the other movement, they’re not only mutually beneficial but profoundly intertwined.
Both pursuits have goals, and even if the end points are sometimes uncertain, to get there you simply need to keep moving. And both are introverted, solo activities. No-one can help you. On the trail or on the page, it’s you alone that moves forward.
I’m sure the introversion and solitude that draws some people into writing also draws them to run. Until I started to run I never realised quite how introverted I was. In fact, it would be accurate to say that for over thirty years my self-image had been of someone entirely different, and I’m thankful that running shattered that illusion.
When running is good it feels like an escape, and this is much the same with writing. It’s a place you can go where the questions and answers are yours alone, and this liminal space feels boundless and necessary.
Progress in running or writing often feels the same. When it comes easily you flow with a sense of wonder at the effortlessness, as if watching yourself carried by a river. Or it can be a cathartic process, perhaps heavy labour at times but always tunnelling towards a light.
And then sometimes it’s just a slog. You stop and start. You can’t find any rhythm. You reach the end with an uncertain bluntness. Not unhappy, just…
I think my running are writing are borne of the same compulsions - the desire to explore, to find things out, to examine boundaries. I want to go places I’ve never been before.
I daydream a lot when I run. I’m rarely thinking of the process of running itself. And it’s in this space of almost unconscious physical activity that the fuse of my imagination often sputters to life.
I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.
―Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Sometimes when I’m running images can come to me with such eidetic ecstasy that I feel my eyes swelling with tears. I didn’t cry at the birth of my children and I couldn’t squeeze a tear at many other moments of my life when it might have been desirable, yet I find myself sobbing uncontrollably on my own running through the woods, thinking about something I need to write down. And if you’d told me that years ago, before I knew what it was to run, I couldn’t possibly have understood it.
I did always recognise the sudden urges I had to write when I was on the move, on buses, boats or trains. In airports, too. I always thought it was something to do with movement, but thinking on it now I realise it might be the opposite. In these trapped spaces between one thing and the next your mind has licence to wander. This is what happens when I run. Because I am only running and the objectives are clear and simple, my mind is free to roam. It’s Murakami’s void, the space created by movement between one place and another. And in this void magic might happen. Ideas come here, like sudden flares in the dark.
This explains why the running I find most gratifying is without conscious thought for where I’m going or why. Sometimes writing is like that, too. I might know the start and end point, but in between is all discovery. It’s not entirely mysterious, I know there’s something to find, I’m just not sure what it is yet. It’s a bit like running a new loop. You might know what the beginning and end looks like, but everything else you’ll find out along the way.
In running and in writing there is a pure, atavistic joy of expression. I suppose neither are much different from a dog barking excitedly and leaping in the air.
I know there’s no real end point to either. There will be no celebration or retirement, no point when the work is finished. There will be no divine flash when I might think ok, that was It, and now I’m done. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s worth it, and even if I can’t explain why, I know for sure it is.
I’m not an accomplished runner or writer, but if there are glimpses where I feel like they’re among the most important things I do, does it even matter? It’s like my own augmented reality. We tell ourselves stories in order to live, as Joan Didion taught us.
In both running and writing it’s possible to reach a state of mind where you’re so invested in the moment you might have slipped from this world and into another. That alone is worth it. And so I’ll try to keep moving, keep writing, and keep examining the spaces in between.
Some news and notes…
The Adventure Journal picked up last week’s post and re-published it on their website. It’s something they approached me about a while ago and it was great to reach some new eyes via a quality publication that I’m more than happy to be associated with.
Another publication I enjoy is Matt Barr’s Looking Sideways podcast and blog.
I wrote a piece for him this week about why Kelly Slater may be the greatest (competitive ) surfer of all time but falls some way short as the greatest athlete of all time, despite claims to the contrary.
GOAT is unquestionably the most abused and misused acronym in modern sports media. @wsl are among the worst offenders. @WeLookSidewaysIt’s an interesting debate and always seems to get people’s backs up. It was re-posted on Beachgrit, too.
And I’m enjoying my new gig as contest reporter for Beachgrit. Watching so much pro surfing isn’t always fun, but the waves have been good so far, the comps have been filled with drama and intrigue, and writing a report each day is a creative challenge (and a physical one due to time zones!) You can read my reports on the Hurley Pro from Sunset Beach here, and here and here. (It’s a slightly different style and audience, of course). I’ll be reporting from the Meo Pro Portugal in a few days.