How running with my son taught me that life really isn't a race

I’ve been through phases where I couldn’t stop running. Up and down the Thames for endless miles, panting and spluttering along the way while my headphones pumped disco music into my ears and sweat dripped from my brow. I must have looked a right tit.

Running was a hobby, then a habit, then teetered on the edge of becoming an addiction. Years of therapy have taught me that’s just how I respond to anything remotely pleasurable: I gorge on it until I am sick and then, eventually, I ruin it for myself. Just as it was with booze and drugs, so it was with running.

After getting sober in 2015, exercise became my all-too predictable methadone. It provided endorphins and distraction which, I figured, was what I needed. In fact, I should have been learning to cope with life like a grown up, without recourse to such comfort blankets. We all need to confront the ups and downs of being human head on. I didn’t understand that at the time so I kept on running until I got injured or ill or too exhausted to keep going.

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This cycle of excess and collapse went on for a couple of years before I learnt to calm it all down. I got a trainer, learned about different sorts of exercise and came to understand that rest and recuperation is just as important as the exercise itself. I used to get anxious and miserable whenever I had nothing to keep me busy. Now I regard stolen moments of inertia as precious and nourishing. I schedule them into my day and remind myself that napping or eating good food or drinking water is as physically beneficial as lifting weights in the gym or running on the treadmill for 45 minutes.

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My 12-year-old son told me he wanted to start running. Worryingly, he proposed all sorts of madcap goals: implausible speeds, barmy distances. I was concerned he might have inherited my addictive gene, so I steered him towards a more balanced approach: each day, we would run together. We would pay no attention to our speed or distance. We would start at a comfortable pace and, on the first day, would keep going for just 15 minutes. Almost anyone can do that. The next day we’d run for 16 minutes. And continue to add an extra minute every day. An extra minute of running is almost imperceptible. But if you keep at it, before you know it you’re running half an hour non stop. And without even trying, you are running faster because your body has adapted.

Nine years ago, a half-hour run would have struck me as hardly worth it. But this morning my son and I banged out two laps of a local lake in that time. We are faster than we were two weeks ago but not so fast that it’s silly. Our steady pace allows us to chat intermittently, then spend a few moments in silence, listening to the crunch of the autumn leaves under our trainers. It is inexcessive, satisfying and beautiful. We leave our phones at home. We don’t have fancy fitness trackers. I time us on a 15-quid Casio wristwatch. Halfway through my watch beeps, we turn around and jog home. When we get there, we are flushed and lightly perspiring. We are energised and happy.

Just one extra minute a day. That, and a bit of patience, is all we need. It gives us a simple, unintimidating and achievable goal. We look forward to it. In fact, I would say it has become the highlight of my day. Our minds are settled as our lungs fill with fresh air. Once I would have found it hard not to push us both towards personal bests, aiming each day for greater distances at faster speeds. But one or both of us would have got injured or disheartened. Excessively ambitious goals can do that to you. It took me over four decades to learn the dangers of overreach and embrace the beauty of humble, steady progression.

I hope my son will learn these lessons sooner than I did. Mind you, if we keep going at this rate, we’ll be running for two hours by Christmas. Which sounds a bit over the top. I might not have thought this through properly. But for now, it’ll do.

Read more from Sam Delaney here.

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