Runners often plod the same few concrete-laden routes, but exploring takes you to the ragged edges of town, where urban landscapes fray and meet with country
I’m weeks away from the Scafell Pike Trail Marathon. I’m bored. This new target was supposed to reinvigorate my running, but – while sometimes at weekends I make it out to the hills and moors beyond Bradford – most of the week I’m stuck circling Morley, south Leeds. They are the same roads and tracks I’ve been plodding around for four and a half years now: roads that have been leached, by repetition, of all interest. My internal map of the place is complete and uninspiring.
At least, that’s what I thought. Halfway through a mid-week fartlek session, a half-hidden public footpath sign that I’ve never followed before told me otherwise. The truth is more like this: the map of Morley in my head has enough routes with labels like “7 miles + moderate hills” overlaid on it that I’ve stopped exploring. “Running is too boring for me” is a constant refrain from non-runners and, dead to my surroundings, I feeling that same boredom encroach on my runs. I take an unplanned right. It goes almost nowhere, skirting the edge of a field of cows before throwing me out on to a main road. But, emboldened by the new scrap of topography added to my internal map, I take a lane I’ve never followed before and stumble into something else.
Related: Why running is the perfect pastime for geeks
Related: Could caffeine help you run better?
Continue reading...
0 comments :
Post a Comment