Richard Askwith

A casual observer might conclude from this and previous descriptions that I am a running masochist: that there must, despite all that I have written about joy,

And for a moment I, too, have ceased to be a dumpy, nondescript jogger and am simply a human being, running free, barefoot, fearless and full of life.

As I do so, the idea of being lost irretrievably at sea takes a temporary grip on my mind – and I feel a shiver of physical fear tingle up my neck.

be an element of self-flagellation to my training regime.

But you always find dryness in woods: it doesn’t make the damp beyond seep any less insidiously into the bones.

enter this race and you will be fed, watered, timed, told where to run, photographed, rewarded with a medal and reunited with your kitbag.

Ideally, no major distress is involved – although if it is, so be it. But anything that awakens a response of quiet stoicism is to be welcomed, as a perfect preparation for the day ahead.

not feel a primal urge to run, fast, into the middle of it all.

racing her heart out for the glory of the animal kingdom while even the sun struggles to keep up.

Shrugging off discomfort and dealing with uncertainty are what we must do to survive. Embracing uncertainty is what we must do to thrive.

The bedraggled landscape starts to sparkle beneath it as it dries. It is as if a pencil sketch had been transformed into a watercolour, and then into a lustrous oil painting – all in the time it takes to run 200 metres.

And it seems highly unlikely that one can spend three days straining every fibre of body and mind in adventurous pursuits and not return somehow enhanced: if not a better person, then perhaps at least more of a person: more alive, more awake to the world.

Aren’t you then simply paying to replace real joy with an artificial version – as you increasingly derive your pleasure from the ‘rewards’ you are accumulating rather than the process of running itself?

But don’t let anyone kid you into thinking that you’re the one doing well out of the transaction.

But you may, for a few short, shining hours, feel alive.

My spirits rose, as human spirits always rise when darkness begins to melt away. This is, of course, one of the attractions of early morning running.

Running is, to borrow Samuel Johnson’s definition of the purpose of literature, something we do because it enables us better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

Rural nights unspoilt by light pollution are vanishingly rare in modern Britain. When I’m lucky enough to be out in one, I like to make the most of it.

The dark, metallic sky glowed with starlight, each pinprick as bright as shredded tinfoil in the vast shadow of the night.

the environment, the atmosphere, the romance, the adventure – and our sheer good fortune in being able to go out running in a place like that, with people like that, on a day like that.

The idea of a run seemed irresistible: now, in the moonlight, while there was all the time in the world, and the world was, to all intents and purposes, all mine.

the unbroken views of half the Lake District National Park – ancient, shimmering, perfectly delineated – were somewhat breathtaking. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before.

There was the joy of running in a beautiful place, on a beautiful day, with the sun on my face and nothing between my bare feet and the sea-washed sand. There was the joy of sharing a happy moment with family and friends; and the joy of full-blooded, lung-bursting, win-if-it-kills-me racing. And, simultaneously, there was the joy of running like a child: casting off restraint, caution and decorum and charging madly towards the beckoning water.

We are, after all, still going to die, health and safety or no health and safety.

We can be immature in our behaviour for all sorts of reasons; and sometimes there is a nobility in our immature moments – just as there can be an ignobility in the habitual caution of maturity.

Yet it all shone with ghostly silver – as though I had travelled back into someone else’s life, long ago, in a dream.

Most of us go through life ignoring this wealth of choice, relying instead on the patently inadequate ‘mud’, a bit like only ever using the same two programmes on a fancy washing machine.

There’s something restorative about the kind of rain that seems to wash away the illusory protections of civilisation, leaving just you, a hint of sodden clothing, and nature.

But seven o’clock in the morning courage? Now that’s a different matter. Send me out for forty minutes or so of running through the fields, making full use of a body that has taken aeons to evolve, absorbing a million little details of the corner of the universe that actually surrounds me, and by the time I’m halfway through I’m ready for anything. Troubles? Bring them on. We’re only helpless if we choose to be helpless. That’s the miracle of humanity: resourcefulness; resilience; defiance; heart.

chorus of birdsong that for some reason I haven’t noticed before

Drifting off the path, I savour the challenge of the slope, the treacherous surface and the daredevil obstacle course set by the trees.

Fifth Age of Running means: not ticking off achievements but doing things for their own sake.

I must be imagining it, but it feels as though the colours are singing, harmonising with a

Living for outcomes rather than experiences works only if you avert your eyes from the inevitable final outcome (death). The precious things in life are moments: the experience itself, not the tweeting or posting about it; the doing, not the having done.

Never mind that the answers aren’t important. Curiosity is life’s rocket fuel.

the shock of the fresh dew sends shivers of life through my drowsy legs, galvanising me into alertness.

The world has its faults, but each night ends with day, and hope floods in when morning has broken.

This is what has been missing from my recent life: the colour, the detail, the texture, the incomprehensible complexity of nature, inexhaustibly refreshed each day.

A storm bursts, a wind whips up, the fog descends, and the gentle curves of grassland become an incomprehensible cat’s cradle of indistinguishable slopes, booby-trapped with gorse and bogs, cold, confusing and distinctly dangerous.

I lack the knowledge, or the aural discernment, to identify each call, but the complexity is still thrilling – like the voices of a London street market – and distinctive, in the way that the sounds of a London street market are distinct from those of a street market in a foreign city.

My legs were tiring by then, but it was hard not to be galvanised by Ceri’s enthusiasm as he danced with no apparent effort between boulders and gorse bushes, light-footed as a goat;

References to children playing ‘hunt the hare’ and ‘hunt the fox’ go back even further. (It’s conceivable that Shakespeare referred to such a game around 1600, when Hamlet, telling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to lead him to Claudius, says: ‘Hide, fox, and all after.’)

The idea occurred to me just a few minutes ago, when I opened the front door and was struck by the cascade of individual birdsongs that greeted me, palpable as the warmth from an opened oven.

a young, weather-beaten, serious-browed man on a quad bike, with a tatty khaki coat, a big sheath-knife on his belt and what looked like a miniature bugle hanging from a cord around his neck.

Ahead, slightly to the right, a huge silver moon still gapes like a hole punched in the metallic blue sky, while daylight streams through that yellow gash on the horizon, which is now to my left, with a molten gobbet of red-gold sun

And my drifting mind begins to sense the familiar rhythm, the patient reeling in of each slope and turn, the thrill of discovery as each new corner is turned or summit crested; the bright release of the downhill dash …

And the days when your morale would regularly be boosted by dramatic improvements and new personal bests are long gone.

Anything that could conceivably narrow the gap between me and my Olympic heroes was irresistible to me.

At one point I think I was running and daydreaming about running at the same time.

But the thrill of discovery – of not knowing what to expect – proved at least as motivating as any stopwatch.