What I write about when I write about running

The body/notepad keeps the score

Kathrine Switzer, the legend and first woman to ever run a marathon at Boston Marathon in 1967. She signed up under an alias and race organizer Jock Semple tried to pull her off the course as he did not want women to race. (Photo by Paul Connell/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images)

About Running

When I think of running, I think of how many times I have succeeded in using the sport to anchor myself in times of confusion/dejection/unease over the years. I don’t solely think about running as ‘keeping fit’, I think of all the ways that it has allowed me to grow, process, grieve, avoid, address, deny or overcome throughout my life.

I started running around 16 and ran my first marathon at 19. At first, I was running from a place of self-hate, escapism and an early 2000s influenced desire to be smaller. Like all relationships, my relationship with running is one that has shifted through various highs and lows over the years, but regardless of the positive and negative memories, it is something that is deeply entangled with meaning and emotion for me.

I started running because I disliked myself, and I would be lying to say that running is now fully free from that kind of masochistic I-must-do-better sentiment for me. But I kept running because the positive mental effects felt so good. From the instantaneous runner’s high, to the sense of achievement after a race, to the feeling of community in womens’ running groups (shout out to Athene Club London and GirlGangCrazy LA), running has been a crutch and a giver of joy throughout my 20s.

There are many positive elements of running which come together to make it so addictive: like achieving a new mileage or speed goal, running outside and being in nature, improving your self-relationship through healthy discipline, confidence, routine etc. Even the commercialised aspect of running is enticing (I try not to buy all of the unnecessary and expensive running gear but it’s still a fun part of ‘being a runner’).

Running as transference

But my favourite thing about running is the feeling of mental clarity and lightness that often comes after a run. I define transference as the act of moving something from one place to another, and through running, we can move our feelings and thoughts from our minds to the world around us.

When you run alone outdoors, you are solely with yourself, your thoughts, your music and the landscape around you. Everyone’s internal monologue differs, but as I run, my mental activity can range from: going over my to-do list and personal goals, making sense of how I feel about an issue with a friend/job/lover, reciting adrenaline-fuelled self motivational monologues, (or sometimes self critique depending on the day), practicing imagined conversations in my head, and choreographing dances to accompany the songs playing through my Beats.

At the end of a run, I may have exhausted all possible avenues of conversations with myself. This can bring a feeling of lightness, like something has been worked through, transformed or left behind.

I see this experience of transference through running to be solely true for running outside and in nature. There are times when I can fully perceive negative thoughts and stuck feelings leaving my body and transferring to whatever tree/river/park that is nearby me when I run. It is harder to move through certain feeling states if you are in the confinement of concrete walls, and being outside allows for a kind of connection and harmony with the natural world that reminds us we are bigger than whatever is tormenting us in that moment.

In the act of running, we experience many of the ingredients required for transference to occur: silence with self, time to focus on what feelings/thoughts we want to move/change and closeness to elemental forces. In being in nature, we can connect with trees, rivers, streams the ocean and ask for support in processing whatever we are feeling. We can ask for the weight of habitual thought patterns and attachments to be relieved.

About writing

This essay title is inspired by Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I am yet to read the book, but the title stays with me because the idea of running and writing being inextricably connected resonated with me even before I had thought deeply about why.

In terms of transference, writing can offer a similar experience to running. When I journal, I am often journaling with the attempt to understand or make sense of something. When I began writing this, I had a vague understanding of how running and writing connect for me. In the process of writing, I came to understand that similarity as being an experience of movement or transformation. In this sense, I reached a deeper level of understanding and a new mental state through the act of writing.

This is particularly important to remember in conversations criticising AI and the use of ChatGPT, because in forgoing writing we are forgoing the parts of our brains we use to process and grow our consciousness.

Writing is a tool you are blessed with, it is something that allows you to access a deeper understanding of your experiences, opinions and self. A private journal is a space where you can be fully honest and unfiltered, you can ask questions, you can write down things you are ashamed of and would never speak aloud, and you can move the thought from your mind to paper, you can move from one state of consciousness to another.

Running and writing to experience more deeply

My relationship with running is complicated; I am not sure if I can ever truly separate it from the desire to be a smaller, fitter, ‘better’ version of myself. Self-development is so deeply ingrained in our understanding of being that seeing yourself as a never-ending improvement project is normal. But striving often exists in opposition to acceptance.

My relationship with writing is equally complicated; I love writing for the joy it brings me, but this love is not free from an egoic desire to be a good writer. I want my writing to be published. I want to stick to a strict writing routine. At times I want to make a career out of writing. To fail to achieve these dreams would mean failing to be a good writer, and in this sense my love of writing is not purely about pleasure but also about being validated for being good at something.

Despite these complexities, writing and running have served me as ways of accessing a deeper experience of being for a large part of my life. Although they may be hobbies entangled with a desire to prove myself, both helped me to understand that these contradictions of feeling can and do exist in so many of the things that make our lives meaningful. My commitment to writing and running (commitment in an on-again off-again situationship type of way) taught me that I would rather learn to hold these contradictions and sit with them when they challenge me, than to live a life absent of the sense of purpose and understanding that they bring.