The Run

It is like this every Saturday. The same route, the same scenery, the same time. The people are a mixture – some she knows or recognises, others she sees once and then never again. She stops in the same place every week too – at the end of a long, straight section, just before the path curves round to the left and on, past the pub with canopies and chairs outside, on past the church and beyond. This is always a point of decision – turn around and go home, or carry on; push herself that little bit harder, go that little bit further, feel that little bit more.

So, as always, here she stops. Bent over, hands resting on knees, her top drenched through, hugging her back through the dampness of the sweat. Her lungs gasping, dry and rasping like sandpaper. As always, she turns and looks, still bent over. The path is still empty – but for an early morning dog walker – alive most of all with the still fresh memory of her footsteps. As she does so, she considers: I must be the advertiser’s dream. An aspirational young woman, free and unencumbered, on the road.

That doesn’t matter, she tells herself. It doesn’t matter that someone like her, doing something like this, someplace like this, the same time every week; it doesn’t matter that every week the profile of someone like her sits in front of the advertisers and brand managers of the biggest sportswear firms and they consider: how do we reach her? How do we connect to her? What is she thinking and feeling? Why is she running? Where is she going? And where is she going back to?

Today she so nearly sets off and runs further, but she knows she shouldn’t. She has run for nearly half an hour already and must of course repeat that to get back. She has things she must do today; the friend to see for lunch, the presents to buy for the party tonight, the phone calls to make and emails to send. All of which stretches out in front of her, the usual rhythm of her Saturdays, as predictable and as varied as the path that she now turns on and, slowly at first, starts to head home on.

The dog walker is a way off in the distance still, the dog ambling aimlessly by the bank of the canal just to her left. She picks up speed slowly and steadily; it’s always hard to restart, but inside a minute the strength returns, the adrenaline recommences its course through her body. The dog walker doesn’t notice her as she passes, too intent on his phone call, talking slightly too loudly about where he will meet the listener before the game this afternoon. She carries on, under the bridges, past the houseboats, back towards the city as it slowly stretches and yawns into the weekend.

As always the second half is slower than the first; the path is slightly uphill in places, there is a greater chance of having to wait at crossings and, of course, she is wearier. She is home, entering the code to the front door in a breathless blur; she is into the flat quickly, not bothering to turn on lights; she leaves the fridge open, giving her enough light to see by as she pours the juice she had squeezed before she went out. She stands against the work-surface, a normal pace of breath slowly returning, and drinks. Two long mouthfuls, she pours again, and this time drinks more slowly. She caresses the fridge door closed, turns the taps in the bathroom and flicks her bedroom stereo on; the music fits appropriately with the soundtrack in the mind of the advertising executive as she allows the bath to fill before relaxing into it, letting the warmth of the water envelop her tired muscles and ligaments.


She plans her outfit for the evening in her mind, and decides she needs new make-up to complement it; the day taking shape as closes her eyes, sips almost apologetically at her drink and sinks low enough to let the foam lap round her chin. She is refreshed enough in the space of half an hour to give her the momentum to dress, to shop and take part in the rest of the day as fully as she wished to. But with every step climbed or bag lifted, every conversation and brief dance that evening, there will be a dull ache in her muscles, like the smallest of stones in her shoe, reminding her of the exertion and escape of the morning. The ache will remain, in her body or in her mind, all week long; and it will lead her back to the same path, the same time, hands on her knees, lungs like sandpaper.