Crossroads (5 of 5)

Now


All stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, although not necessarily in that order.

This one started with a Facebook status I read one morning at work. It was written by my wife.

'Had such a hard few weeks, but today we have reached a crossroads and had to make a decision. Life is never easy, but sometimes that just makes it more interesting.'

Always on the lookout for an idea for a story, I resolved to start with the predicament we found ourselves in at the present, but look backwards, taking a snapshot of certain times in my life when I'd been faced with potentially life-changing decisions.

The stories came easily, but I knew by writing them in a series, the expectation would always be that the final instalment would be the one that counted. This sense of expectation was confirmed by the odd comment from friends after earlier instalments were posted.

'An inspiring read, but start from 1 of 5. 5 still to come,' read one, referring to part 4.

'Part 5 is the clincher. Come on Saleby, don't keep us waiting. Revelations I hope!' read another.

In my head, I'd written and re-written the final part several times over, without actually putting ball-point pen to white copier paper.

Maybe that was a good job. Because sitting on the shores of Ennerdale Water on Saturday, I realised that the end of this particular story was just a beginning, and that a different story altogether was the one I needed to tell all along.





I have two names for it. I'm unsure of where they came from, but they seemed to capture the essence of what I was feeling inside: 'Keep On Burning' and 'The Sound Of Fire'. Although I didn't understand it at all for many years, I know now that they were always the flip sides of the same coin.

'Keep On Burning' was the positive manifestation. The motivational force that pushed me on to challenge myself, prove myself, do crazy things, stay up all night, look for adventure. I wrote about it once.

'The Sound Of Fire' was its negative alter-ego. This was the static that bred restlessness. The creak and crackle of burning timber that goaded me, reminded me that whatever I did, it would never be good enough. The encroaching wall of flame that drowned out mindfulness and, for no apparent reason, cast hopeful days under clouds of dense smoke.

I'd lived with both for many years. They'd shaped the majority of my adult life, and a part of me was content to let them dictate the rest. It wasn't until I reached the crossroads, however, that I knew that I couldn't let this continue.




Just over a year ago, a friend took his own life. He left behind a daughter a year older than our own little girl. I thought of little else for some time, but remained quiet whenever people spoke about his death. For most, suicide is impossible to comprehend. Some of us, however, understand just a tiny bit, because we've been to the dark place and been blessed to come back.

A couple of weeks after Robbie's death, we attended an end-of-term concert at primary school. As I watched the show, my mind kept returning to the same scenarios. If it hadn't been for a stranger on a beach, Lightning and Whirlwind - a fizz and bluster of unstoppable and eager energy - would never have been created. I thought of them, and I imagined Tammy speaking the same impossible words to our children as Robbie's wife had had to speak to their girl. It was just too much to take.




They say that people take their own lives when their fear of living is more than their fear of dying. I'd been spared the ultimate decision by the four throw-away words of an old man. I'd been lucky. But as I watched that concert, listened to the choir end the show with a rendition of Gary Barlow's 'Sing', I realised that I'd lived my whole life in fear. A fear that drove me to seek solace in running, alcohol and social isolation. A fear that had sought release in eating disorders and self-harm, and had paralysed me into making the wrong decisions time and time again. A fear that had led me to a beach and, even now, clouded my vision to the fact that I had as close to everything as anyone could get.

It doesn't take a choir long to sing a Gary Barlow song, but by the time they had, I knew what I must do and I knew I was strong enough to do it. It was then that I saw the little blond boy for the first time. Sitting on the edge of the stage, dirty black plimsolls dangling on the end of skinny legs, I was surprised at how much he looked like Lightning. But, of course, he wasn't Lightning. The boy was me.




Secrets are poison, and the truth sets you free. I would tell the truth about my guilty secret in a series of stories, just as I have for 'Crossroads'. I had no doubt that they would make people view me in a different way, that they'd cause embarrassment and unease. I had no doubt that the process would be difficult. But I knew I was strong now, and I knew it was the right thing to do.

'The Sound Of Fire (Part One): Four Songs By Gary Barlow' told the middle of my story. The Sound Of Fire (Part Two): The Rainbow told the end. Another story - 'Little Blond Boy' - my most brutally honest piece of writing and the work I'm most proud of - never made it through. Ironic, of course, because these were the words that told the beginning of the story. These were the words that told the truth.




I was seven years old. The story is simple. Take a little blond boy - a quiet little boy who smiles a lot, tries hard at school and is always running. Introduce him to an older man. An older man who flirts with housewives, spends the weekends 'fucking birds' on Butlins and who, surely, for the love of God, should have known better. For the six long weeks of a primary school summer holiday, have the man befriend the little boy, take him on day trips to Skegness and buy him books to read. Then have him repeatedly sexually abuse the little boy, and see where the story takes you next.

Seven years old.

The story will be long and complex, touched at times by ecstacy, but washed through with despair, self-doubt and self-hatred. The minor character will disappear at the end of the summer and, no doubt, continue living his life in the way he sees fit. The other will end up, nearly forty years later, watching a choir sing a Gary Barlow song and know that redemption will only be found by telling the truth.

This story was 'Little Blond Boy'. They say that Paul McCartney wrote 'Yesterday' in five minutes flat - that you know your writing is good because it just pours out and you can't stop it. I wrote my story in a single week-day early-morning sitting. I knew it would be hard to read, but I was unprepared for the depth of reaction from Tammy when I handed it over.

My guilty secret.

Of course, Tammy had been one of only very few people I'd ever mentioned it to. At the time it was happening, I'd told no-one, not even my Mum or twin brother. As I'd got older, I'd attempted to clumsily raise the subject, usually when I was drunk, but really got nowhere. In my late twenties, I'd seen a doctor, told him the thoughts I was having, the things I was doing to myself, and begged him to find me someone to speak to. I only visited the psychiatrist once, his proposed solution being a prescription for Cypramil and the words, 'Take these according to the dose on the label. You'll soon feel better.' I didn't. I did what I'd always done. Kept it to myself and just got on with it.

The act of writing is a cathartic process. Sometimes it's rewarding to know that other people will read your work. At other times, the fact that no-one will ever read it doesn't matter one bit. After speaking to Tammy for hours one night, I decided not to post 'Little Blond Boy'. It's currently folded up untidily in a clear plastic envelope in the kitchen cupboard, sandwiched between an old Lakeland 50 road book and a tatty copy of a Harvey's Paddy Buckley Round map.

With that simple act of writing, the sound of fire stopped. It had taken a lifetime to rid myself of my guilty secret. Now it was no longer a secret at all. And, more importantly, I was able to view the past with a clear perspective. Guilty secret? Seven years old. A little boy. All the guilt was his.




On looking back upon the crossroads of my life, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd taken a different path than the one I did. Where would that path have taken me? However, more times than not, I accept the decisions I made - after all, they led me eventually to a place I always wanted to be.

I look back on that summer with the same sense of acceptance. What happened didn't ruin my life, it merely led me a different way. It made things difficult at times, but now I'm free of its burden I can view things with a detachment I've never experienced before.

Would I have become a different person if the past had been different? It's impossible to know. Strangely, I'd like to think that it wouldn't be so. For without this past, I wouldn't be who I am. And, for the first time in my life, that person is one I'm happy to be.




Crossroads become important when they're overshadowed with fear. From almost the moment we're born, we're conditioned to take a certain path. Societal norms, parental expectations, schooling, government and the crushing grip of corporate advertising brainwash us to believe that one certain path is the right one to follow. And follow we do, for the main part, because it's easy. And because, eventually, after following this path for so long, we become scared to leave it.

When people speak of crossroads, they usually refer to a crisis in their existence - a point in which they realise the path they're treading is the wrong one, and they know, deep down, that they have to choose another. It's an intimidating scenario - it's scary - involving, as it inevitably does, leaving someone, something or some previous way of life behind. The crossroads I've described in my stories have all been examples of this scenario.

However, now that the sound of fire has gone, now I am no longer guilty, no longer scared, I've come to view crossroads in a different way. Whereas previously I'd avoid them, only making an important decision when the situation offered no other choice, now I welcome them. In a personal paradigm shift, a crossroads is no longer a crisis to be periodically endured, but the promise of opportunity that should be actively embraced.

I've reached plenty more crossroads since the day I told the truth, but now I tend to focus on the positives that might result from a difficult decision rather than fear straying from 'the path'. It's the same with our latest.

This one involves our livelihood and lots of pedantic and tedious legislative documents with titles such as The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, The Trade Marks Act 1994 and The Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011. It involves the reclassification of a children's colouring board from 'a stationery item' into 'a children's toy', and it means that, having built a successful business within a slightly 'grey' area, European directives dictate that we're now going to totally change our business strategy, or simply give up. 'Grey' areas have become 'black' or 'white'.

The paths from this particular crossroad may lead to a scaling-down of our operation or bankruptcy. They may lead to new markets, increased success and higher profits. They might lead to a new life doing something unimagined, exciting and totally different. Who knows? It's still too early to tell. For now, we'll do whatever's necessary to secure the jobs of the people we employ and make a reasoned decision - with a clear head, without fear - in the fullness of time.

Which takes me to the end of this story, the beginning, on the shores of Ennerdale Water.




A narrow, muddy trod leads through the tall grass from the main path to the shore of the lake.

It's mid-morning, and the view we're greeted by is breath-taking.

Before long, the superheroes are in their swimming clothes and gingerly wading out into the water. Tam lays down a couple of towels on the pebbly shore as I lie down, pleasantly exhausted.

After a 1.45am alarm call, I'd met a friend of a friend at Dunmail and spent the following six hours supporting him over Leg 3 of his Bob Graham Round. Having been welcomed by a stunning sunrise, we'd run across the roof of England, climbed Broad Stand and entered Wasdale well up on schedule. It had been a fantastic morning.

Nourished by bacon cobs and sweet tea, we'd left an hour later, but decided to make the short detour to Ennerdale Bridge on our way back to Keswick for a spot of post-run recovery.

As I drift into sleep, the sun on my face, the sound of children's laughter in the warm air, I can't help but think that life can't get much better.

I wake sometime later, disorientated but refreshed. Sitting up, I look out to the lake. Whirlwind's got a tennis ball. She throws it across the water and yells, 'Fetch, doggie!' Obediently, Lightning splashes across the water, barking as he goes. He grabs the ball, hands it back to Whirlwind, who pats him on the head and says, 'Good doggie!'

They continue the same game for a bit before changing to giving each other piggybacks. While Whirlwind's on Lightning's back, I reach for my phone and take a picture.

Tam leans over and gives me a kiss.

'They're good kids aren't they?' she says.

It's then  that I think of the crossroads we've visited and the ones we're still to visit. The Facebook post that inspired recent words comes to mind, and I remember the extra sentence she'd written on the end.

'As long as I have Chris and the kids, then nothing else matters x.'

So true, I can't help but think. So true.




Every moment is a crossroads. Every thought. Every decision. Every yes, no or maybe.

Sometimes we'll get it right.

Sometimes we'll get it wrong.

But that's ok. It's the way it should be.




After a while, the superheroes get bored. The sun's disappeared behind cloud and we're all hungry.

We get changed and while towels and clothes are being stuffed away in bags, I paddle out into the cool water and look down the valley.

After a moment I hear a lazy ripple of sound as Tam joins me.

She wraps her arms around my waist and draws me close.

Then she whispers, 'So, what we doing next, Mr Rainbow?'

Crossroads (4 of 5)

2003



I wake early on the morning after the fire and am filled with a feeling I can't describe. Everything I'd worked for over the past five years had gone. There was nothing left.

A couple of hours later, I meet Our Kid at the corner caff. I usually eat cereal, but after last night's events, I'm in the mood to throw caution to the wind. I go to the hatch and order two large coffees and a couple of egg and bacon baps.

We sit outside around a dirty wooden table for a fair while and take in the sights of the early morning market. All around us shutters are being opened, boxes unloaded from the back of white vans, cheap clothes being hung from plastic hangers and placed on display under hastily written 'ANY 2 ITEMS - £10' signs. It's a scene we were usually a part of. But not today. We've got nothing more to sell.

A steady stream of traders make their condolences as they order their breakfasts in preparation for a busy day.

'Really sorry about the fire, twins.'

'Gutted for you boys.'

'All your stock gone eh lads? Can't fuckin' believe it! Lost a fair few readies an' all I hear?'

'If you need anyone you two, you know where we are.'

We listen to the usual mix of genuine upset, touching concern and vacuous bullshit, and decide to sit a little longer with another brew. There's no hurry.

The tensions and heightened emotions of the previous evening have mellowed into something slightly calmer. If this is how losing everything feels, I think, then losing everything doesn't feel so bad.



Eventually we make our way down the top aisle. Red and white tape cordons off an area a few hundred yards long. On the other side of the tape, the remains of a dozen or so shop units and shipping containers smoulder. Angular bare limbs of metalwork stand twisted, bent by unthinkable heat to the shapes of dented dreams.

The stench of fire is still strong. We poke about the blackened unit in the same way we'd prod sticks at bonfires as kids. Market bars and wire dump bins have melted to the concrete they stood on. Thousands of pounds' worth of children's toys are now just ash.

By the back wall, a yellow kiss of colour catches my eye. I walk over to take a look. I know what it is before I get there, but I need just to double check.

Reaching down, I pick up the little yellow sports car. The headlights are broken and the side doors have melted shut, but, in the midst of devastation, it's remained remarkably intact. I turn it over and slide open the battery compartment, clocking the two Duracells inside. Then, hoping for a sign, I slide it shut, press a button on the side on the car, OFF to ON, and place it on the floor.

The car springs to life. Its wheels rotate and it careers around in a crazy, hypnotic bump 'n' go action. Then it stops.

But only for a second.

I'm waiting for headlights to flash, doors to open and the roof to retract like I'd seen so many times in previous weeks. But not this time.

Instead, accompanied by warped music, a mutant, whining slow-mo voice starts repeating inane lyrics from a nauseating pop song.

'I'm a Barbie girl
 In a Barbie world,
 Life in plastic
 It's...'

As suddenly as it's started, the sound cuts to silence.

I glance up from the car to look at Our Kid. He's smiling.

A small crowd has gathered. Stallholders. Some who've lost it all, like us. Others who have been lucky.

Mr King from across the aisle downs the dregs of coffee from a Styrofoam cup and says, 'Isn't that amazing?'

I nod, thinking the same as all of us. In a fire which had destroyed all before it, by a miracle this one little yellow plastic car had remained relatively unscathed.

Mr King squashes the cup in his right hand as I look back down at the car. A piece of worthless plastic. A sign that, whatever, we'd be fine.

'So, what you going to do next?' he asks.

My eyes rise to meet his. 'I don't know,' I tell him, 'I just don't know.'




I run along the seafront that night, back from work to the small house I rent in Chapel with my new wife and our year-old son. I'm unsure why I feel compelled to do so - after all, I've barely run a step in years. But it just seems right.

There's no hurry. The sun skids off the sea's surface, reflecting rainbows and memories.



I'd returned from The Run For Africa early, my dignity intact. 'A clash of personalities' I tended to refer to my failure as due to, although the official line was different. In a press release and during an interview with the Daily Mail, the expedition leader cited the reasons for my withdrawal from the project as 'mental problems'. Devastated, but brave, I clung on for several months, teaching part-time whilst joining my brother as partner in his market business.

But the black night would always come. It was written.

I owe my life to an elderly gentleman I met for the first, and only, time on a lonely beach. And to four flippant words that gifted me a realisation that I just could not give up. 'Keep it up, son,' he'd told me. 'Keep it up.'

There's always calmness after a storm. Once the dark clouds had burst, life was hard, but different. The air had a new clarity. I'd been to a place where many people go, but some never return. I'd been there, stared at the impossible blackness and been saved by a single spark. I knew something now - a knowledge that could only help me grow. No matter what happened in the future, nothing would ever be so bad. For the rest of my life, I knew nothing could ever take me back.

And I felt this, believed in this, despite the noise that continued to grow louder. That continued to taunt me like a painful tooth. Background noise. A tinnitus ringing. The sound of fire.



From the earliest age, I knew I would find her. Be patient, stay around, and the paths we chose at our own crossroads would bring us together. We'd met in the summer of 1999. We'd married in the winter of 2001. A year later, a beautiful boy had been born.

Love brings happiness. My addiction fell away.

For the last five years, running had ceased to be important. I'd filled my days with getting somewhere. Business had been good. Me and Our Kid knew how to work and work breeds success. Impossibly long hours brought days that were absolutely full of not much, but the monetary rewards were outstanding. After a lifetime of being skint, it felt good to have money.

But money is pressed by sacrifice, and recently I'd begun to question the morality of the motives of a chase for more. I'd no desire for the ostentatious shit of success, and now we'd earn enough to live a simple, but comfortable, life, the thought of grafting as hard as I had done for the foreseeable future made me uneasy. 'The most precious gift you can give a child is your time', I'd read somewhere, and that phrase would niggle at me more and more as I left my loved ones before dawn, not to return till way past dark.

Decisions are hard to make, however -  even if you know you're right. The inertia of living is a powerful force. Fortunately, sometimes decisions are made for you.

We'd watched our livelihoods burn last night, and although there had been arguments and tears, for the most part we'd viewed the tragic spectacle with the same detachment as we had last November as we'd supped a couple of pints while watching the fireworks.

'Everything we have is in that fire,' we'd said to countless well-wishers and the odd gloating, nosy bastard who's own lives were so dull they got their kicks through the misfortune of others. 'Everything we've worked so hard for is in there.'

It happens, though, that words and feelings are different. And just what was I feeling? As Our Kid shadow-boxed his way across the car-park at 2 am, as his yells of 'Keep On Burning!' echoed around the now-deserted complex, as our laughter pinballed between the huge steel legs of the Millenium Roller Coaster, just what was I feeling?




It's a perfect late August night. A lovely night for a run. As I slowly clip off the miles, the realisation comes that I've been given yet another chance. I did things better this time round, but they still weren't right. How will I use this clean slate?

Lost in a whirl of probable and improbable scenarios, a phrase appears in my head, as they often used to back in the days when I was a runner.

Empty miles.

I hold it for a while, toss it around, explore it. In my past it had been aimed at me with such negative connotations. I wonder why it's here, now, of all times?

But in the next few thousand steps, I understand.

At this moment - on this evening - for the first time in my life, I am just running. Before I've always wanted something from it - escape, a boost to my ego, transcendence on the step. Now, for the first time, I ask for nothing. Now, for the first time, I think of home and realise I've everything already.

After years of looking for something in the miles I'd covered, I've finally found what I really needed in some place totally different. Those miles were, indeed, empty.

Things are not the same as they were. I feel it. I hear it in the slow, laboured footfall of an out-of-shape man who used to be a runner, but isn't anymore.

Right then, I know that I'll run much more. That this totally pointless act of putting one foot in front of the other will be important again. And I wonder, now I'm no longer looking, just how surprised I'll be at what I find?




The phrases we repeated last night enter my head again as the sun sinks lower.

'Everything we have is in that fire.'

'We've lost everything.'

But now I know it's not true. This first short run in five years has taught me that. What we lost last night was just paper and plastic. Cardboard and glass. The phony promise of a future I didn't care for. The chains that bound me. What we lost last night was nothing.

And the feeling I had when I watched it all go? That was the joy of freedom. A freedom derived from the knowledge that love is everything, that love is the meaning of it all, and the rest of it - the money, the job, the house, the stuff you surround yourself with - well, the rest of it doesn't matter one bit.




I reach the dip at Chapel Pullover and turn off the seafront to head through the village, dodging the prams and mobility scooters littering the front of amusement arcades.

This road I'm on, I wonder, where will it take me?

Perhaps it's better not to know.

And right now, it doesn't matter either. Right now, I'm going home.

Crossroads (3 of 5)

1997


I look over towards Wayne - this year's newly qualified teacher and supreme staffroom piss-taker. He's talking to kindly old Yvonne from Year 2 on the subject of vegetarianism.

As she gets up to make a cup of tea and turns her back to him, he casts me a sly glance and winks.

'My daughter's been a vegetarian for nearly fifteen years,' Yvonne says as she sits back down.

'Well, I've thought about it now and again,' Wayne replies, 'but I love meat too much.'

'Ohh, I know what you mean,' Yvonne carries on. 'I don't have it a lot, but I couldn't do without it at least a couple of times a week.'

'Sunday mornings!' Wayne exclaims and looks at me again, smiling. 'I love a bit of meat on a Sunday morning!'

'Bacon sandwiches!' gushes Yvonne.

'Oh, I know,' Wayne continues. 'But do you know what? Sometimes you just can't beat a nice ham shank.'

He looks back at me, grinning, while Yvonne looks bemused.

I laugh as I get up from my chair and leave the room, giving him an undetected thumbs-up. Unfortunately, as far as the Kirton Primary School staffroom goes, this entertainment is as good as it gets.




Knowing my class will be out in the playground, I return to my empty classroom and ponder this evening's appointment with the Head.

I've been here for over five years now. It's demanding, time-consuming, all-consuming at times, but not without rewards. I'd been surprised at first at how much I'd enjoyed teaching, but recently - as always - I'd begun to want more.

I'd run away from the Riverton Bridge that night and straight into a future. This was that future. Had I made the right decision? Probably not.

Arriving back at the caravan at the end of my run, I'd thrown on a jacket and legged it to the hardware store in Rossmoyne to collect the Australian Girl as she finished her shift. I'd told her that I'd changed my mind. That to be with her was worth any sacrifice. I'd finish my course, we'd move back to England where I'd become a teacher and pay off debts. Then I'd emigrate to Australia and we'd start our new life.

She seemed fairly pleased with my decision.

I'd worked harder than ever to secure a High Distinction - the only one of the year's intake to achieve such an honour - and had quickly found a job on our return to Blighty in a primary school a short distance from my childhood home. All the sacrifice had been worth it.

When she'd left me two weeks before our wedding, I'd really not seen it coming. She'd started saying stuff like, 'You think more of your running than you do of me,' recently, but I'd never imagined she was unhappy.



That was four years ago now, and, although I kidded myself that I was ok, I knew deep down that I was dying bit by bit by little bit. Loss had become my companion as the people most important to me went away. I'd watched my Dad die of lung cancer, looked at a girl I loved for the very last time, and then taken an early morning phone call from my Mum which broke my heart.

After pulling her life around, she'd met a man she adored, got married for the second time and become happier than I'd seen her for many a year. The phone never rings at 5 o'clock in the morning unless it's bad news. As I picked up the receiver and heard Mum's voice, something in me knew what she was going to tell me. During the night, her husband of five weeks had died in her arms.

Dark clouds were gathering. A storm was approaching. A black night was going to come. Its timing was uncertain, but it would come. It was written.



There's a phrase used in France - 'la petite mort'. Translated as 'the little death', it's generally used as a euphemism for orgasm. It's a phrase I'd come across first around the time of that delicious trainee-teacher at the Grammar School, and was born more from wishful thinking than an interest in foreign languages. 'La petite mort', however, can mean much more. It also describes the brief period of spiritual release or transcendence experienced after any activity where a part of your 'life-force' - your very essence - is expended.

For four years I'd stayed alive by dying just a bit at a time. I'd nothing left, or so it seemed, except these brief periods when, just for a while, things felt bearable.

Richey Edwards had used the phrase in an NME interview I'd read referring to the 4REAL incident. In 1991, as The Manic Street Preachers spat out 'Motown Junk', he'd picked up a razor blade in front of Steve Lamacq - a music journalist who had dared to question his integrity - and carved the legend into his left forearm. The wounds later required 18 stitches. He'd spoken not of pain afterwards, but of calm in his world of chaos.

I wasn't ready, yet, for self-mutilation, but there were other ways. For some, alcohol, drugs and one-night stands produced similar effects. I'd tried all of them in varying degrees, but I was too vain to be a drunk, too driven to be a regular drug-user and too incompetent to be a womaniser. So my little deaths were found somewhere else. On the step. At the end of a run.

For four years, I had run more than I had ever run before. At first, I'd considered it a force for good. Hooking up with a friend and running partner who was quicker than me, I'd trained with a discipline and intensity that was new to me. In the space of a year, I'd lowered my best times for 5k, 5 miles, 10k, 10 miles, half-marathon and marathon, whilst being selected to run for Lincolnshire over cross-country and on the road. For those viewing my performances as a springboard to another level, however, there would only be frustration and disappointment.

As my life had become increasingly empty, the nature of my running had changed. Just as the heroin addict needs more regular fixes to chase the initial transcendence of the early hits, so it was the same with me. After a while, performance was no longer a factor I considered. Volume, regularity and a constant chase for that feeling on the step were all that mattered.

I'd drifted away from club athletics, from running with friends or in a group, and started to run exclusively by myself. I needed the little deaths that only long runs could bring me close to feeling.

It wasn't too long before I withdrew into my '30' routine. At weekends, I'd wake early, eat and run 10 miles. Returning, I'd take a bath, eat and sleep. At mid-day, I'd do the same again. And in the evening, I'd repeat once more.

I'd finally found the hollow life that was dumb,worthless, pointless, but capable of sustaining me. A life in which there were no loved ones leaving, no insecurities to tear myself down with - no need to face the adult world for just these short, sweet, precious intervals of time.

I'd moved on eventually - helpless, loser, junky - to the full weeks or fortnights of school holidays, cocooned in this soft world that protected me. And for six weeks one glorious summer, I'd run 30 miles a day from one end of the mainland to the other and had felt safe, numb and beautiful.

A Monday would always arrive, however, when I'd need to step out of my bubble and return to the world that I was finding increasingly hard to cope with. A Monday when I'd no longer be just a Runner, but a teacher, a role-model, a friend, a normal human being. A Monday when I'd hang on by bloody fingertips trying desperately to make it to Friday night.




Sitting on the edge of my teacher's desk, I open the top drawer and pull out the envelope hidden underneath the register. I take out the short letter and read through it, satisfied it says everything I need to.

Dangling my legs, I think of the times I'd sit with my brother, two young boys on sea-front railings. I think of the time I sat on a bridge at sunset six years ago, of a half-empty book of photographs, of cracks in fragile porcelain.

I look out the window to the children who admire me because they know no better.

I listen to the sound of fire, pushing me ever-closer to the ledge, a lonely beach, the edge of who-knows-where.

Then I rummage through the piles of marking for a ball-point pen.

I've kept The Run For Africa quiet until now. But now it's been confirmed that I've been chosen as a runner on the expedition, I have to take the appropriate steps.

For eight months, I will climb into my bubble. Eight months of running 45 miles a day. Just running. Nothing else.

And while I'm away, the world will change.

And while I'm away, I'll change too.

And when I get back, everything will be alright again.




The pen I find's not working. I scribble with it on a piece of scrap card until the ink starts flowing. Then I put my signature on the paper in front.

The bell rings to signal the end of dinner break and I hear my class line up noisily on the playground outside. I fold the paper, place it back inside the envelope, put my resignation letter back into the top drawer of my desk, and then go out to meet them.    

Crossroads (2 of 5)

1991



I'm sat, leant against the wall of a corridor in Perth's Curtin University. I've been here the best part of an hour.

Across the corridor, there's a door with a small sign attached. 'Senior Course Administrator', it says. For some reason, it reminds me of that poky little careers room at Skeggy Grammar. I close my eyes as a memory appears from nowhere. A young, beautiful French lady breathlessly whispering, 'Bonjour Christophe,' before licking her lips suggestively and giving me a look that can only mean I want you. I bathe in the recollection for a bit, before opening my eyes to the sterile serenity of this academic office building. I'd never seen that trainee French teacher again after that time in the Careers Room. Maybe she'd gone back to France or got the sack. If only I'd been a couple of years older back then, I kid myself, then I wouldn't be sat here now trying to wiggle my way out of this latest personal disaster.

The talk with the careers lady hadn't had its desired effect. I'd worked hard at my 'A' Levels, but eventually had found myself at a loss when my future direction was next questioned. I just wanted to run. That's all. No job had held any interest whatsoever. On a whim, I'd decided to study Sports Science at university, content in the knowledge that with a full grant I wouldn't be forced to pay off student debts when I finished the course. I'd secured a place on a degree course at Birmingham and become a student in the art of falling apart. 'Your university days are the best of your life,' people kept telling me, even those who had never been. Mine were the worst so far - no mean feat considering the fact that the ones before hadn't seemed all that brilliant.

It had taken me a couple of weeks to work out that, besides running, I didn't care at all for any other sports. It had taken me less than a week to ascertain that the university population contained more than its fair share of wankers than the general population.

For three years I'd taken refuge in running, experimenting with extreme training methods and extreme diets, clocking up huge mileages but enjoying only limited success. 'You leave all your best performances in your training,' they said. 'You run too many empty miles.'

For three years, I survived - barely - buoyed only by the hope that the next long run promised.

For three years, I was that kid. The weird kid who didn't fit in, stayed in his room, never went to parties. The one who never talked, had only a couple of friends, who you only ever saw walking by himself.

Towards the end of the final year, big companies descended on the campus for the recruitment shin-dig called the 'milk round'. We were all encouraged to go - after all, securing a job with United Biscuits, Imperial Tobacco, ICI or Barclays bank was something every young person desired in life. Right?

I went home that week, unsure of what I wanted in life, but sure that it wasn't that. The final year had brought home some truths which I had long suspected but done a decent job at ignoring. My times were no good. I had nowhere near the talent. Go to America? Scrape a living on the US road-running circuit? Forget it. Maybe it had been a crazy dream from the start, but crazy dreams sustain you. The prospect of a career with United Biscuits certainly didn't.

A couple of months later, armed with 8 'O' Levels (6 A's, 2 B's), 4 'A' Levels (3 A's, 1 B) and a respectable 2.1 degree, I was skint and desperate and clueless. Having spent  many hours applying for jobs where qualifications were more a hindrance than a help, I eventually struck lucky, blagging a dead-end position as floorwalker in a Skeggy seafront arcade. Once I'd stepped onto the careers ladder, there might have been no stopping me. But, in no time at all, I'd missed a rung, slipped from my lowly spot to the very bottom, and ended up, somehow, as a member of a cauliflower cutting gang.

Field work had been hard, but I'd loved it more often than I'd hated it. It was gruelling, lowly-paid (unless you were good at it) and strangely satisfying. But, eventually, not satisfying enough. For 8 months I lived the life of a peasant, and then new horizons beckoned.

Our Kid had gone travelling to Australia months previously and it wasn't long before his letters stirred the feeling that that's where I should be too. I'd dreamed of running across the Portsea dunes, of jogging in the shore-break of the Indian Ocean, of finding something worthwhile. I'd be happy in Australia. Surely? I had to go.

And go I did. But, whilst things started well enough, it wasn't long before Fate's cruel push landed me in the shit again. I met a girl and fell in love. At the end of the year, when my working holiday visa expired, I made one of those rash decisions I'm so prone to making. If I returned to the UK, it would be 6 months before I could get back into Australia on a holiday visa. That was too long. But if I secured a student visa, I could return straight away. The thought of a second round of university education wasn't the most appealing prospect, but if I picked an easy course, it couldn't possibly be too bad.

After watching Craig Mclachlan's inspiring performance as the new teacher at Summer Bay High one evening, I started contemplating entering a secondary education programme. Good sense eventually prevailed. A secondary school teaching course would almost certainly involve lots of work. No, what I'd do was teach primary. It'd be a doddle. Reading books, painting pictures, piece of piss.




So here I am now. Waiting for the Senior Course Administrator. Waiting to tell her that I've made a mistake. Trying to wiggle my way out of this latest personal disaster.

I'm three months into my course. The workload is unbelievable. I'm doing well - really well - but I'm worn-out, disillusioned, done in. Each day is a struggle to squeeze everything I need to do into not enough hours to do them. And it's my own doing - I know that. That's what does my head in. The 'student visa option'  wasn't a smart one after all.

I'd managed to raise the $10,000 overseas student course fees by accepting money from anyone who'd been gracious enough to lend me some - my family, my girlfriend's family, various banks - but now I'm in a big hole, trying desperately to repay my debts as well as pay my dues. I'm living in a tiny caravan with no electric in the back yard of my girlfriend's family's house. I'm attempting to juggle university attendance, completion of assignments and teaching practice with a dish-washing job in a Northfield restaurant that takes up 6 hours, 4 nights a week and all day on Saturday and Sundays. I'm cycling the hours journey from the suburbs to work each time, and I'm cycling the hour's journey back. It's the same with University - a good half-hour from my caravan. I'm fit, but living in a constant state of knackeredness. My running has become sporadic at best, non-existent at worst. I've had it.

And recently, the doubts have started to eat at me, chip away - little voices getting louder, leading me to this corridor and that door.

Little voices. Taunting questions.

'Is this all worth it?'
'Is this what you want?'
'How much do you really love her?'

And recently, the words of others I respect - words I'd disregarded previously in the hope that I knew what I was doing - have started to resurface.

Words which questioned the wisdom of a year abroad built on money I didn't have.

'Chris- you'll have no other option when you finish that course - you'll have to get a proper job.'

Words which questioned my choice of 'career'.

'Chris- you know as well as I do that hardly anyone becomes a teacher because they really want to. They do it because they're not intelligent enough or imaginative enough to do what they really want. Teaching - it's a second-choice profession full of second-rate people.'

At first, these voices were whispers. But now they scream. Sitting in that silent corridor, the noise is so loud that I'm just a click from crying. But I've made my decision. A decision that I have to make. A decision that will make everything better.

I'm giving up.

It's the only thing I can do.

I've gone to the University building to tell them that I'm done. I'm leaving the course, and then I'll leave the country. And when I leave the country, I'll leave the girl who I love, but thought I loved more than I do.




The Senior Course Administrator's secretary told me an hour ago that Doctor Evans would be back from lunch in ten minutes. I hear footsteps and look up - my moment of reckoning is here. But it's only the secretary again. She reminds me of Joe Mangel's wife off 'Neighbours'.

'Sorry to have kept you waiting there,' she says, 'but Doctor Evan's won't be back in this afternoon. Could you call back tomorrow?'

I assure her I can, make my way to the bike compound and pedal back to my van. Once there, I sleep for a while, making the most of my evening off from pot-washing. When I wake, it's late in the day. It won't be long before it's dark. It's then that I go for a run.




Cutting across the Shelley Oval, I'm soon on the path by the Canning River. It's a while since I've done this and my breathing feels strained, forced instead of natural. But I'm doing what I was born to do, and soon I'm part of the beat of movement.

 The sunset stains the water red as I head towards Riverton Bridge. I'm alone on the path - too early for the drunken kids, too late for the well-to-do power walkers. Lost in now, before I know it, I'm there. I stop running, edge my way along the wrong side of the railings and sit in the middle of the old wooden bridge, my legs dangling over the river.

In less than half-an-hour, the fog of recent days has cleared slightly. For just this moment, things seem so much clearer.

I sit for an hour. I watch the birds make ripples on the still water. I watch the headlights and tail lights - the comings and goings of life - on the Leach Highway flyover. I think about where my journey's taking me.

Then I run again. Back home. Straight into what's still to come.

Crossroads (1 of 5)

                                            





'Had such a hard few weeks, but today we have reached a crossroads and had to make a decision. Life is never easy, but sometimes that just makes it more interesting.'

Facebook status, Tammy Rainbow, 12th June 2013





1982


I've only ever been in this room once. Buried at the back of the school on the way to the Biology lab and the fourth year toilets, it's small, poky and painted pale blue. There's above sign on the door outside it. It says 'CAREERS ADVICE'.

As I'm called in and invited to sit at a desk, I briefly recall my last visit a few months previously. The school had hired a trainee teacher from France for a year. The idea was that she'd take small groups of 'O' and 'A' Level students from time to time, and talk with them, thereby improving their linguistic skills in French conversation.

I'd a big thing for French girls, the highlight of my almost non-existent social calendar being the one time each year when the school's annual French exchange students descended on the local roller rink on the night before they boarded their coach and hopped off over the channel. In terms of romance, it was never a successful night unfortunately. Fisherman's jumpers tucked into stretch jeans, Our Kid, Yorkie and myself would endeavour to make an impression by lapping the rink with nonchalance, with the odd attempt at skating backwards, whilst being studiously ignored by the very girls we were trying to woo.

The French conversation class had been similarly successful. As a shy and awkward 15-year old, I found it impossible to talk in English to reasonably pretty English girls, nevermind talking in a foreign language to a gorgeous French mademoiselle in her early 20s. I'd managed to stutter, 'Bonjour. Je m'appelle Christophe,' at the beginning of the session - my only words of conversation for the best part of an hour - but had then fallen into a glorious reverie, gazing at this exquisite vision in front of me whilst just two thoughts jousted for prominence in my head. 'Isn't she beautiful?' was the first. 'What the hell is she talking about?' was the other.

Now, sitting behind that desk, an overweight middle-aged woman is hoping to steer me towards the correct path in life. Her faint smile only partially hides a look of terminal boredom. She talks to me in that kindly, patronising way that nurses have mastered when speaking to a patient or care-workers have finely tuned when conversing with the elderly.

'Well. Have you any thoughts about where you see yourself going in the future?'

As is often the case when I'm trying to hold a conversation, the internal dialogue running through my head bears little resemblance to what I actually say.

I'd like to be a runner. Yeah, I know that it's impossible to earn a living at running, but it's the only thing I can see myself doing.

I pause.

Well, apart from being in a band. We've got a Moog synthesiser set up in the garage at home. And a coronet from when we used to be in the Salvation Army. And a set of drums. I've already learnt the synth part to Soft Cell's 'Sex Dwarf' and the drumming part from Blondie's 'Sunday Girl'. Woody's on about joining and writing us a song. A bit underground, you know. Like B-Movie or The Associates.

The woman's waiting for an answer.

'Errr...not really,' I tell her.

She studies a computer print-out in front of her. It's got my name on it. Christopher Martin Rainbow. Class 5B.

'That's a strange choice of 'A' Levels. Biology, History and Economics. A science, a humanity and something in between. Do you realise such a hotch-potch of subjects might limit your future career prospects?'

Career prospects? Career prospects! Listen, I chose those subjects because I'm good at them. And because they're marginally more interesting than the rest of the drivel they force-feed us with here at one of Lincolnshire's most prestigious establishments.

She's waiting again, but I've not finished.

Oh...and because Babe from 'The Marathon Man' studied History. I thought it would be cool. I love that book. Don't suppose you've read it? You might have seen the film. It stars Dustin Hoffman. Ace it is. I love Dustin Hoffman. 

Ok, I've finished now.

'Errr...not really,' I tell her.

She turns over a page of the print-out and studies the results of that questionnaire we all had to fill in last week. Hobbies. Interests. Row after row of pointless questions and 'Circle A, B, C or D's.

'According to your interests and hobbies, I've two main job suggestions you might like to consider.'

Fuck me, here we go.

' A librarian..'

Jesus Christ.

'...or a teacher.'

Even worse. 

'Have you ever thought about either of these as a future career?'

'Err...not really,' I tell her.

'Well, maybe you should,' she replies.

In an instant, a sinking depression fall upon me. I've reached the crossroads that we all come to when we grow up - the point where all the things that make who you are are expected to be tossed aside while people who know fuck all about you encourage you to become something that, frankly, you'd rather not. The point in life when the signpost you've reached has just two fingers pointing in opposite directions, one saying 'Dreams' and the other saying 'Job'.

 A job? I don't want a job.

For the first time in my young adult life, the crushing inevitability of what my future holds hits home.

There's a small window behind the woman. As she goes on and on, I stare blankly in the direction of the dirty glass pane. Outside, it's raining.

Is this it? When it boils down to it, is this what it's all about? Is this what we're supposed to bow down to? Respectability and a pay packet? No wonder all the adults I know are so fucking miserable. 

Heaven knows I'm miserable now too.

She's about done when there's a knock on the door.

At the second hesitant knock, I turn round. The door opens slightly and the French mademoiselle pops her lovely head through the gap. She's got a group of 'A' Level students in tow. Obviously thought the room was unused.

'Oh, excuse me,' she says, apologetic and embarrassed.

She goes to close the door, but not before she sees me. I manage a small smile before I have to look down.

'Oh, bonjour Christophe!' she sings in the way that pretty young French girls do in late-night films on BBC 2.

Alright gorgeous!

I try to reply but, tongue-tied, I can't get any words out before she's shut the door.

The woman across the desk brings our interview to a close and pushes over a pile of leaflets for me to look through. I thank her, stand up, stick the leaflets in my Head bag and make for the door, daydreaming.

I hear her voice again. 'Oh, bonjour Christophe!' And I see her smiling face. She obviously fancies me.

I leave the room labelled 'CAREERS ADVICE' and lope down the corridor, a swing in my step, thinking not of my future career but the living that lies in front of me.

Suddenly, the future doesn't seem so bleak.

Running Laps

The alarm goes off too early for a Bank Holiday Sunday. It takes me a moment to fathom why I've set it at all, but by the time I've reached over and turned it off, I've remembered.

Today's the day I run laps.

An hour later, I'm pulling the van onto the broad, grassy verge by the 'Well run' gate just out of Claxby Psalter. Since waking I've spent most of the time see-sawing between expectation, excitement and dread. As I get out and lock the doors, I'm still uncertain whether this is a good idea or a bad move. I'm aware, however, that the answer will only be found in doing, so I tuck the keys in my shorts' pocket, check my shoelace knots are tight, and start running.




On Saturday evening, half-way through my second run of the day, I'd wondered briefly how many times I'd run this particular loop. As my default, easy 5 mile loop, it's mainly off-road, always beautiful and straight from my front door. I'd guessed I'd done it maybe two or three times a week for the last three or four years. This day had been different, however, in the sense that I'd already done the same run in the morning. Two laps of the same course in one day? It went totally against what my running had come to represent. What was going wrong?

The answer, I soon realised, was nothing. This year, I'd set out to make different journeys in different ways, and recently, I'd found I'd been doing things in my running that I never would have contemplated even a year back. Whilst the lure of Empty Miling was still strong, this year I'd visited places I was sure I'd run away from for good. Speed work with my club-mates? A road marathon? A 10k race? Aspects of the running experience that were 'just not me.'

And yet, my motivation was at an all-time high. Could this be due to the re-introduction of the very things I'd grown to turn my back on?

I'd figured that maybe it could be.

I'd looked back on my previous week's miles. A marathon at the weekend and a local race on Wednesday night had meant that most of the rest of my outings had consisted of half-hour morning jogs around the Spilsby playing fields. I'd cherished these 'comma runs' a couple of years back, but tended to go further and faster in the mornings nowadays. Eight laps of the playing fields gave me about 3 miles - a perfect distance for a leg-stretcher or a recovery run. Whilst I'd originally found these runs monotonous, I'd come to appreciate them, giving me, as they did, a totally different experience to my favoured point-to-point or large loop courses. The short laps added a lazy metronomic beat to the rhythm of an easy run. Oftentimes, that beat would so absorb me that I'd forget how many laps I'd actually run.

That word 'laps' again. It was taking hold of me.

I'd thought of a conversation I'd had recently with a friend on the subject of running laps of Croxby - a 4.4 mile circuit in the heart of the Wolds, highly regarded for the severity of its inclines. Whilst the summer season races around the route stuck to one or two laps, he'd told me that he often used to run four laps when training for a marathon. I'd mentioned a Fb post I'd seen during the winter from a runner who'd done six laps - more than marathon distance - one Sunday morning.

It set me thinking of the laps of a local hilly route I'd done several times whilst training for my Bob Graham Round. At a little over 4.5 miles, the Fordington short route consisted of three tough climbs and hardly any flat running. The most laps I'd ever done before was four.

As I'd run along the side of the Wolds Grift on Saturday evening, I'd had an idea. Tomorrow morning I'd run five.




In the short distance it takes me to reach the Psalter crossroads, I've already formulated a plan. I'll run the first four laps fairly hard, at a pace just off marathon speed. On the first two laps, I'll concentrate on 'pushing off' the hills. On the third lap, I'll hit the hills hard from the bottom. On the fourth, I'll concentrate on just getting to the tops without stopping. I'd take a short break at the van after this lap, have a drink, grab my camera and run the fifth more as a warm-down than anything else.

The first hill out of Claxby Psalter is steepest at the bottom. I ease into my uphill style - leaning forwards slightly - small, quick steps - and wait for the gradient to hit me. A couple of hundred yards in, my legs are heavy and my lungs are burning. But this hill has given all its got. There's a point in most hills where the slope eases slightly. It's the point where you go from struggling to fine in a matter of seconds. I call this the 'push-off point'. An increase in pace at this point will always pay dividends in a race. You don't need to know where this point is on any particular hill - you just need to feel it. As soon as I sense that slight easing of incline, I pick up the tempo, running hard until I'm over the top.

A long, gradual descent into Skendleby follows. Focusing on keeping relaxed, I turn right at the bottom crossroads and approach the second climb. This one's less intense than the other two, but it's a long slog. Get it wrong, run it too hard, and your chances of doing well on the last hill are buggered.

I'm past the house on the bend, a choir of yapping dogs accompanying me as I start to head up. The gentle slope teases, before biting with a short stretch of 20% and then easing again. I'm running well - feeling ok - and my push-off is strong and sustained. I slow to a steady pace as the tarmac seems to flatten, but bear in mind that the road continues its upwards path for a good mile or more. By the time I'm at the sign-post at the top, my legs play host to a weariness that is pleasant in these early stages of the run, but could be murderous in the latter.

I turn right again at the sign-post and let gravity take me to the floor of the Fordington Valley. I always think of this section as 'the Big Dipper'. Ahead of me, the road bottoms out and immediately starts its steep journey to the top on the other side.

Fordington Hill has a certain reputation locally. It's only short, but it's gradient is savage. Hit it hard and by half-way you'll be in pieces. By the top, you'll have fallen apart. For local beginners, it's a rite of passage. Run all the way to the top without walking and - Congratulations! You've passed the test! You're now a true runner!

I approach it steadily, mentally ticking off the minor landmarks that reveal the progress I'm making. Past the first house, past the second house, past the green gritting bin, onto the farmyard. Hard, hard work, but I feel the push-off point at the farmyard gate and will myself to go, move faster - sprinting all out to the top tree and the oasis of relief that awaits me there.

Arriving at the tree, my pace slows until I'm flushed with the sweet wine of recovery. It's easy running now back down to the van. I cast aside my thoughts of Lap 1 and set my mind on Lap 2.




The number of laps you run is an interesting concept. The reason I chose to run five laps of Fordington was straight-forward and entirely reasonable. I'd done four laps on a previous occasion and I wanted to run more. I guess I could have gone for six or seven, but I figured just one more than four was enough.

The number of laps I do on my comma runs around the playing fields is less rational. I always run eight. Why eight? I originally found that running eight laps took about half an hour, which is about right for an easy recovery run. However, I've found, over time, that my pace varies considerably on individual runs, depending on what I've just done or what I'm going to do. If I go out the morning after a particularly gruelling long-distance race, my pace could be 10 minute miling or slower. If I'm stretching my legs on the morning of an evening 5 miler, my pace might be nearer to 7.30 or 8 minute miling. If running for a half-hour was my guide, why then do I never run six or seven laps on slow days, or nine on faster days? I don't know. But I don't. It's always eight.

A recent American collegiate study set out to find if there was any rational process in choosing the number of laps to run. Four separate groups of athletes were instructed to run 28, 29, 30 or 31 laps of a track. Once they'd finished their allocated number of laps, they were given the option of running an extra lap. Some athletes agreed, most declined. Only a statistically significant proportion of the 29 lap group elected to run one more. Their reasoning? Merely that 30 seemed a better number of laps to run than 29. The 28 lap group were quite happy to remain at 28 - after all, 28 is a nice round number. None of the 30 lap group took up the offer, and, interestingly, an insignificant number of the 31 lap group did, obviously reasoning that they'd reached the target of 30 laps and just tagged on another for good measure. The study concluded that there was little rationality in deciding on the number of laps to run. Some numbers, especially even numbers, just seem 'better'.

There's exceptions to every rule, as my five Fordington laps prove. And sometimes the number of laps a runner decides to attempt is extremely carefully thought through. On the day before I ran my laps, a young man from New Zealand set out to run a very specific number of laps for a very specific reason. The following article from the Taranaki Daily News explains:

"New Plymouth artist Ryan Ballinger has found an unlikely way of combining his art and sport - by running 728 times around the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Ballinger has mapped a track around the Govett-Brewster construction site and on Saturday he began running laps representing the number of days the gallery will be closed.
"I thought transforming this pre-existing space into a running track was a good idea," Ballinger, whose father Paul Ballinger was a noted marathon runner, said.
"To do this physical endurance work is, in a way, a gesture of physical sacrifice to the change that's going on in the gallery and to the gallery itself", the 23-year-old student at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland said.
He has called the work Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish.
Ballinger will run 728 laps of about 500 metres, about 370 kilometres in total, during the six weeks of the show.
"Running is an integral part of my work. It has been an obsession for years. When I was younger, I used to read a book on the Olympics every night and make plans to win gold medals."
Ballinger sees athletes like Peter Snell and John Walker as artists themselves and each of their races as a performance.
"I think there are a lot of similarities between an athlete and an artist, or sport and art. Both require skill, discipline and training.
"I do look to the great runners as artistic influences. There are a lot of the same principles involved, except with art there is a lot more weight on the ideas side of things."'




Running down the long hill from The Gate Inn, I'm soon past the van and starting the next lap. I'm glad the first lap's out the way. My mind flits back to winter season cross-country races, all held over lapped courses. The first lap is always one of doubt and a lack of belief - I mostly feel terrible. Once that lap's done, however, something mostly always happens. Like a switch flicking, sluggish limbs discover some pep and my thoughts change from trying to stay ahead of the runners behind me to trying to catch the runners in front.

And on this run too, I'm now in it. I've found The Flow. The running's good, more relaxed, less contrived. It seems like no time at all before I'm back to the van and starting Lap 3. Without a watch, I'm unsure of exactly how long I've been running - I like it that way - but the last lap seemed much quicker than the first, although my effort varied little between the two.

I think of my comma runs, where, with small laps, I constantly find myself in the position of losing tracks of how many circuits I've done. I remember, too, my attempts at a 12-hour track race some years ago. I'd gone in with a plan of running ten laps, followed by walking one lap. It had seemed simple beforehand, but whilst moving, I'd become frustrated at how often I'd lost count during those running laps and was forced to run an extra one before my walking lap, just in case.

Lost in movement, I find that I'm already at the top of the second hill, surprised at how quickly I've arrived there and wondering just where those last 20 minutes have gone.




It would seem that running is, indeed, a form of time travel. Take your eyes off that stopwatch or the pace readout of the GPS and it's easy to discover. I'd hazard a guess that every runner has had those moments when, caught up in a run, they'd hardly realised that a half-hour or hour had passed them by. This may, of course, be an illusion, but it's an illusion backed by science.

It appears that dopamine is the main neurotransmitter involved in time processing. Dopamine agonists - compounds that activate dopamine receptors - tend to speed up our perception of time, which passes more quickly. Take cocaine, amphetamine or MDMA and the phenomenon will become apparent. Or just go for a run, since exercise also increases the production of dopamine - it's this chemical, together with endorphins, that gives us 'the runner's high.'

But there's definitely more to the perception of time than just chemicals. A return journey always seems quicker than the equivalent outward-bound trip, just as subsequent laps always seem slightly quicker than the first. This must come down to increased familiarity.

When in the car, how many times have you said, 'Oh, there's that bridge - we must be half-way home now,' or 'Oh - I remember passing that garage - we've not far to go.'

On the outward journey, you clock these landmarks, but they mean nothing. On the return, you spot them again, but this time they can't help but act as markers for the time and distance travelled. You're passing landmarks that are now familiar and this leads to the perception that the way back seems quicker than the way there.

It's the same, or even more so, with laps. Subconsciously on the first lap, you're taking in insignificant landmarks that on subsequent laps become significant since they indicate how far you've gone or how far you've still to go. Voices talk to you. 'Once I'm at that bush, I know I'm at the top of the hill.' 'I'm at the gap in the fence - the road junction is just round the corner.' And so, for just a little while, time speeds up.




I'm tired as I start the fourth lap. A slight twinge in my right hamstring briefly gives me pause for thought - 'Should I just stop now?' - but I like to finish what I've started, and, besides that, five laps will make for a better story than three.

As I head once more towards Claxby Psalter, I'm thinking about how certain courses seem to have 'right' or 'wrong' directions of travel. I've always run this short Fordington route in a clockwise direction. I think it's probably harder that way, but it also seems like the proper way to do it. The longer 8 mile Fordington route, however, is a different matter. If I'm alone or with club-mates, I'll run it in a clockwise direction. If I run it with Tammy, I tend to run it in an anti-clockwise direction. I'm unsure of the reasons, but this suggests that the 'right' or 'wrong' way for a route isn't simply inherent in either the route itself or a pre-condition in your own mind, but also dependent on the company you're keeping.

On my 5 mile loop from my front door, I tend to alternate directions as much as possible. I'll run it anti-clockwise one time, clockwise the next. But not always. Sometimes, one direction just seems more appealing than the other.

A couple of years ago, a question came into my head whilst watching the Grantham Newton's Fraction Half-Marathon. This is a great event, and watching got me thinking. The race starts on the back straight of a running track. After the gun has gone, participants run clockwise round the track for about half a lap, before leaving the stadium through a large gate. On returning to the stadium towards the end of the race, participants then run a lap of the track in an anti-clockwise direction before finishing on the home straight.

'Why do we run laps of the track anti-clockwise?' That was the question that occurred to me. Was there any good reason? Was this situation the same throughout history? And, aside from running, why are most laps travelled in an anti-clockwise direction? From Formula One racing to horse racing to ice skating, the direction of movement is always the same. Why is that?

As I continue my fourth clockwise lap, these thoughts come and go, increasingly drowned out by the wave of exhaustion that's dumped itself on me. For a moment, I long for the foopaths of last year. But, here too, a mischievious voice nudges me in the direction of this new-found preoccupation. I'd run many circular long distance routes last year, most of which were described in LDWA notes. I wonder how many were described in an anti-clockwise direction, with the accompanying implication that this was the 'correct' way to do them. But I resolve to findout at a later date - Fordington Hill is approaching for the fourth time and I'm not going to have the energy to think again for a while.

I'm determined to finish these first four laps at a good pace. But I'm tired now - really tired. I hit the bottom of Fordington and I'm hardly moving. One last push. One last push. With more than a stagger than a stride. I finally reach the top. All downhill now. Job well done.




I stop at the van, take a drink and swallow a tasteless granola bar. In the throes of post-session euphoria, I grab my camera, lock the doors and jog off before the feeling subsides and I change my mind.

The pace is easy and the nature of the run's totally changed. Just minutes ago, I was running. Now, I'm Empty Miling.

I give my thoughts space to grow. Running laps. What has it taught me?

I arrive back at the van 40 minutes later, no further forward.

Running laps has been a different experience, but have I got anything valuable out of it? Not really.

I drive home, tired and disappointed.




                                              *                         *                         *



It's Tuesday and I'm back on my loop. It's a wild evening - rain showers battle for prominence over cloud-laden skies. A fierce wind blows from the direction of the sea making movement more difficult than it ought to be.

My pace is slow. My thoughts are on Wednesday's race - a road 5k at Lincoln - four laps of an old cycle way. I'll stretch my legs in the morning with a comma run - eight laps of the playing fields, and hope to knock a couple of seconds off my last attempt at the distance, come the evening.

Now 5ks are, perhaps, my least favourite distance. I'd achieved a half-decent 16.10 back in my younger days, but an all-out effort these days would give me a time a good two and a half minutes slower. I wonder why I'm bothering. It's guaranteed that I'll glean little intrinsic reward from racing - running 5ks hurt - but I guess the finish line would provide some good feeling as compensation. And, more importantly, it's something different from what I've grown accustomed to, which has to be a positive in this year of seeking new experiences from my running journeys.

My train of thought takes me back to Empty Miling, the overwhelming guiding force of my running - and the antithesis of racing 5k.

A couple of my favourite passages from Mark Rowland's 'Running With The Pack' come to mind:

'It is true that running has multifarious forms of instrumental value. However, at its purest and its best, running has an entirely different sort of value. This is sometimes known as 'intrinsic' or 'inherent' value. To say that something has intrinsic value is to say that it is valuable for what it is in itself, and not because of anything else it might allow one to get or possess. Running is intrinsically valuable. And so when one runs, and does this for the right reason, one is in contact with intrinsic value in life.'

'When I run, I know what is important in life - although for many years I did not know that I knew this. This is not so much knowledge newly acquired as knowledge reclaimed. When I was a boy, I also knew what was important in life. I suspect we all did, although we did not know that we knew it. But this is something I forgot when I began the great game of growing up and becoming someone. Indeed, it is something I had to forget in order to play this game at all. It is one of life's great ironies that those least in need of understanding its meaning are those who most naturally and effortlessly understand it. On the long run, I can hear whispers of a childhood I can never reclaim, and of a home to which I can never return. In these whispers, in the rumours and mutterings of the long run, there are moments when I understand again what it was I once knew.'

As an explanation of Empty Miling, Rowland's words come pretty close.

Then I remember an article I've just read by US mountain runner, Joe Grant - a constant source of inspiration to me. In 'Ferns and Inclines' he'd detailed two days of running laps. The words had resonated with me in the aftermath of my own day of running laps. Grant had praised the innate pointlessness of running as being key to its intrinsic rewards - just like Rowlands, and gone on to postulate that this was embodied in no better act than running laps - an activity, even in the field of running, so seemingly pointless.

But now, recalling Grant's words, something feels wrong. That's not the way it works with me. It's my empty miles - the majority of my running - that are, at once, the most pointless and intrinsically rewarding for me. For me, running laps is different. My laps are never pointless - they always have a reason. I run easy laps in preparation for a race. I run slow laps when recovering from a race. I run hard laps when training, not Empty Miling, and most of the time when I race - just like tomorrow night - I run laps too.

Running laps carry few intrinsic rewards. The only rewards come in completing a lap, finishing a session, arriving at the finish line. It had been this way on Sunday, and it would be this way tomorrow evening too.

Without a doubt, some laps deserved a small place within my running life - they helped me get results - but, by only running laps - by concentrating only on the finish - surely I'd miss out on the all-around and the in-between. And the all-around and the in-between - that was true running to me. Those miles were the empty miles I loved so much.

Once a thought takes hold, it's hard to control. This one runs away with me, unwilling to leave go until I follow it through to its conclusion.

It takes me to a line from a poem I'd stumbled across by someone I'd never heard of. Written by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the poem, describing IBM workers in the '70's hadn't really been my cup of tea. I'd gotten bored with it, but not before one line had jumped out:

'Running laps never led to flying.'

In a moment, I realise that my Sunday morning running laps taught me little about an activity as inconsequential as putting one foot in front of the other. Its lessons were to be found somewhere much more important.




We've been conned - brainwashed to believe that running laps is a noble way to live a life. Conned for such a long time that we don't cringe when our worth is summed up in terms of 'productivity', and our world is judged overwhelmingly by 'economic growth'.

We've all fallen victim. Lured into a lifetime of running laps that offer little opportunity for intrinsic reward, just promise at the finish. Each lap brings us closer to the finish line. Closer to the things we think we want. Closer to building up enough savings to retire on, closer to paying off the mortgage, buying a fortnight's holiday in some resort with more sun than back home. Closer to being able to justify our worth through the possessions we own.

We all run laps. Maybe a certain number of laps are necessary. But a whole life devoted to running laps is a life less lived.

I think of my Empty Miling, and I realise, for perhaps the first time, that the concept aplies equally importantly not only to the way we run, but also to the way we live.

I picture that look I get from some people when I talk about Empty Miling - people who are always chasing, people who always want more, people who run not for the glorious feelings of just running, but need something else from it. People who loose track of the process and are simply concerned with the rewards of the result.

I hear their voices. The same old, same old.

'Empty miles? Junk miles you mean?'
'Running for running's sake. Total waste of time.'
'You'd be better off running laps if you want to beat that PB.'

Voices, omnipresent and persistent. And wrong.




To base your running life on empty miles is a statement of sorts, but easy to do. To base your life on the same principles is a much braver proposition. And I guess the people who do this get the same short shrift.

'Drifter.'
'Drop-out.'
'You're just watching your life go by.'
'Get yourself a proper job and make something of yourself.'

I know just a handful of people who live their lives in this manner. Their days aren't filled with running laps, doing a job they simply put up with for the future benefits it may eventually bring, sticking to a routine that stifles hope, creativity and joy, simply because it pays the way. No, their days are filled with mindfulness, of an appreciation of the simple pleasures that truly living each moment brings. Their days are filled with making do with what they've got, having just enough and not a lot more, since acquiring anything else requires a sacrifice they're not prepared to make. Of adventure, travel and the ability to enjoy the present. Of a happiness I'm envious of.




By now, I'm back on the step. But I'm not willing to stop. A Ball Of String hinted at the direction that I feel compelled to travel. A Revolution Of One? charted its course. Running Laps confirmed it.

More of Mark Rowland's words pass through my head.

'Living amidst the darkened of the world, our lives are marred by the inability to recognize intrinsic value when we encounter it. Our lives are lived doing one thing for the sake of something else, which is in turn done for the sake of something else. Three score years and ten, or twenty, of an endless for-the-sake-of-which: decades chasing what is valuable but only rarely catching it. To be in contact with something that is important for its own sake, and not merely for the sake of something else, would be to end this chase, at least for a while. For a time at least, one does not chase value, one is immersed in it.'

I stand up. I've made a start.

Now, I go further.

Snakes and Ladders, Friends and Falling

We're just three tops in and already we've made the decision to bail out. We'd started our attempt on the Cumbrian Traverse in less than promising weather, but what little promise there was has now all gone. A stiff challenge has deteriorated into a foolhardy venture.

Coming off Caw, a tentative suggestion had been made by Dave. 'If this doesn't get better, I can see us getting rained off.'

I'd made a joke of it at the time - 'I thought you guys from up North were tough buggers!' I'd told Dave and Chris A. But, just half-an-hour later, things have changed.

After going off-piste, we're heading back in the direction of White Maiden. Crouched behind a huge boulder in a futile attempt to gain shelter, I pull out my GPS, get our exact location and take a bearing to the next summit. When Dave suggests going down to Coniston, this time there's no smart-arsed comment. We're cold and need to get off the hills. It's strange that until that moment, I'd felt ok - chilled and very wet, but uncomfortable rather than in trouble. However, as we crouch behind that rock, the realisation of how cold I am really hits me. After putting my hand-held into the waist pocket of my pack, my fingers are so numb that I can't pull the zip closed. My hands are rapidly becoming useless. It takes an age to get my winter gloves back on.

At this point, five minutes of good sense were definitely in order. What I should have done was pull out my extra base-layer and micro-fleece and put them on straight away. What I should have done was dig in the bottom of my pack for my water-proof trousers and put them on too. What I do is neither.

Knowing we'd be sat in a caff in Coniston within an hour lures me into a false sense of security. A deluded laziness means I can't be arsed to layer up properly. Standing still, I'm cold and just want to get running again.

So that's what we do. And that's where things start to go wrong.




There's times I look on my running as a game of Snakes and Ladders. Running's a game I choose to play. It has few benefits aside from the intrinsic enjoyment of playing the game.

I play a lot, and my consistency shows itself in steady progress. Starting from a lowly square, I move slowly along the board, gaining fitness, improving in performance and accomplishing challenges as I go.

At times, the dice thrown for me are blank and my progress up the board is halted temporarily. Other times witness a sudden dramatic increase in performance, motivation or confidence for no apparent reason. I climb a ladder and reach a higher square much more rapidly than I dare dream. Now and again, after weeks or months of climbing steadily, something happens and you can't help falling. It may be the onset of an injury or a disasterous performance in a race. You tumble down the back of the snake, unable to stop, but hoping that the square you eventually land upon isn't one on the bottom row of the board.

In recent months, my progress has been steady, but pleasing. I've climbed short ladders, but generally moved along just one square at a time. However, I guess part of me knew deep down that a snake was waiting.

The last month's weekends have been busy and exhilarating. Two days on the Coast-to-Coast, a trip to the London Marathon, a blast round The Three Peaks, and a run from Side-to-Side. Future weekends also beckoned with adventure - the Windermere Marathon, receeing in the Peak District, our club's summer relay and numerous BG supports. Lucky then that I'd put a weekend aside to stay at home and have a rest.

All would have been good if Dave Swift hadn't got in touch with an offer too good to refuse. 'What are your thoughts on the Cumbrian Traverse on 11th May?' his e-mail had read. Of course, my thoughts were, 'Yes please.' We'd had our eyes on this one for quite a while. Starting at Broughton Mills, the Cumbrian Traverse is a 35-mile high-level, South to North crossing of the Lake District, taking in 21 summits and finishing in Keswick. Taking around 12 hours to complete, it is, by all accounts, a fantastic day out. I'd let Dave down a couple of times last year due to injury, so when the possibility raised itself again, I jumped at the chance.

Setting off on Saturday morning, spirits had been high. The weather was iffy, but no worse than we'd been out in many times before. My fitness was better than it had been for maybe a year. For ages, the dice had been kind and I'd been playing the game well. As we jogged off from Broughton Mills village hall in the direction of mountains, I was blissfully unaware of how far I'd fall.




Reaching the Walna Scar road a little later, a potential problem rears its head. Debbie, Tammy and the superheroes will probably be at the Three Shires Stone, waiting for us at the point where the route crosses the Wrynose Pass. It's almost certain that phone reception there will be zero. If we descend to Coniston, we've no way of letting them know where we are.

At the point where Walna Scar intersects with the path to Brown Pike, we opt, instead, to go for Plan B. We'll turn left, go over Brown Pike and stick to the path, eventually dropping down Wetside Edge to reach our support. Chris A. pulls out a schedule and we make quick calculations. Instead of being in a warm caff inside half-an-hour, we're faced with another couple of hours of travel.

By now, I'm freezing, but still feeling upbeat. The wind, however, is ferocious. The percipitation swings between rain, hail, sleet and snow. We keep moving, but soon I'm struggling. Dave and Chris A. are leaving me behind. Why the great increase in pace? On the verge of being pissed off, I soon see that they're stopping at regular intervals to let me catch up. Sharing words with each other, I guess they're talking about me. As I reach them, Chris A. says, 'You ok, Chris?' 'Yeah,' I reply, but the look on his face shows that he doesn't believe me. Off we go again, but, try as I might, I can't keep up. I realise that, far from the lads' pace increasing, it's mine that has slowed dramatically. I'm a stubborn bugger, and I never like to admit my failings, especially where running's concerned, but slowly I begin to realise I'm in the shit.

I force myself to stop and put on more layers, but it's a job I should have done ages ago. By now, it's too late. Dave and Chris A. fuss around me, helping me get my jacket off, my fleece on, and my coat back over the top. Their actions tell me that they're concerned I'm not doing well. We press on afterwards, but I'm still hopelessly off-pace. The muscles of my upper body are sore from shivering, my shoulders ache so much I find it difficult to lift my arms. Each stride is fuzzy, hard work. My eyes fight static, my mind running over a story I wrote about a television some weeks ago. Dave drops back, talks to me, asks me questions that I can't be bothered to answer. 'Leave me alone.' This is what's going through my head. 'Leave me alone and don't talk. 'Cause I don't want to talk. Talking's too much effort.'

There's a touch of panic in Dave's instructions to Chris A. 'We need to get off the hills. Get to a road or a house or anywhere. Get warm again.' He doesn't mention my name, but I know he's thinking of me. This is confirmed by his next question. 'Chris - you got an emergency bivvy?' I nod, but I'm thinking there's no way they're leaving me here. Where they go, I go, no matter how long it takes.

Dave takes a descending path to a cascading beck, and I follow. The wind is less threatening, but I'm so tired. Each step is a challenge. We find shelter while Dave and Chris A. make important decisions. By coming off the ridge at this point, we're unsure of where we are. I'm no help. I'm past caring. Chris digs out my GPS and the lads figure out our location and where we need to be. I put on my waterproof trousers and realise I don't feel cold anymore. Why then is my shivering so severe?

For the next half-hour I trudge. Time's slowed down. I take a glove off, but can't get it back on. Chris A. forces one of his mittens on my hand and Dave stays with me, talking about loads of stuff that I can't recall. He's keeping me here, I know that. I must look terrible. But I really don't care. He gets me to take a cake bar from my waist belt - the thought of eating hadn't occured to me - but I can't break the plastic wrapper. He does it for me, hands it back, makes me eat it.

And I trudge. Keep going. Because it's the only option.

Before long, we're on a good path. As we drop down, the cloud clears and the road comes into view. By the Three Shires Stone, there's a couple of cars. I've never been so glad to see them.

Arriving at the fell-wagon, Chris A. orders me to get inside, get my wet clothes off, get dry ones on, get warm. 'I'm ok now,' I tell him, but do as I'm told. Within ten minutes, in warm clothes and a down jacket, my shivering's subsiding. Tam brings me soup and a roll that Debbie's prepared and I wolf them down, suddenly ravenous. Feeling much, much better, a tiredness now takes over me. I'll close my eyes. Rest for just a moment.

When I wake up, we're turning into Coniston and heading for the lakeside cafe. Over an hour has passed while I've been flat out. Tam sees me wake and says, 'Thank God for that. I had to nudge you a couple of times on the way to make sure you weren't dead.'

I feel right as rain again. After pulling up in the car-park, Debbie greets me with the words, 'How are you now?'

'Alright,' I tell her.

'Dave's been saying on the way that it's nice to see that you're just human like the rest of us!'

I laugh, apologise to the lads for holding them up and offer my gratitude for the way they looked after me up there. Chris A. explains the ins-and-outs of hypothermia, but - stood there, chatting to him in the sunshine - I find it difficult to comprehend how different I felt only an hour ago.




As always, I've plenty of time to think on the long drive home. Tam asks if I'm ok at frequent intervals, and I tell her I'm just fine. She tells me of the conversations she had with Dave and Chris A. at the Three Shires Stone whilst I was busy getting changed in the car. How worried they were about me. How glad they were to be off the hills in one piece. She tells me of something Dave had said - something that's sometimes so easy to forget. 'That's why you go into the mountains with your friends,' he'd told her. 'It's a social thing, a good crack. But, you know, sometimes it's dangerous out there and it's then that you need each other.'

His words struck a chord, and as the miles passed, I thought about them a lot.




Snakes and ladders. Friends and falling.

Whilst I may often choose to play this game alone, I look forward to the miles I spend with friends. The conversation, piss-taking, laughter and company can't help but enrich an outing. Most of the time, it's a fun thing, just great being together. But now and again, you realise that friends are there for another reason.

In this game of Snakes and Ladders, it's sometimes inevitable that you'll fall.

And, at times like this, it's comforting to know that your friends will be there to catch you.

On Saturday, two friends caught me. I'd just like to say thanks.