This year, I reach my gritty half century. When considering long races for this most significant of years, I wondered about doing something around the end of June to mark the great day. It may seem paradoxical to celebrate my unscheduled longevity with an attempt to kill myself in public, but that’s a discussion for another time. Anyway, my researches threw up this: that Finland is a cornucopia of bizarre, midsummer races. 
If I wanted to do a marathon on my big day, the world could offer me a choice of two – both in Finland. There’s the Arctic Circle Santa Claus Marathon — one of those midnight sun jobs — and another that defies pronunciation, never mind explanation.
Or I could wait 2 days and instead (but still in Finland) take part in the World Wife-Carrying Championships. At 253 metres, the course has its appeal, but the significant downside is concealed in the title of the event. You’re expected to, let’s say, take your spouse with you.
According to the publicity, "The competition is dominated by Estonian teams and that doesn’t please the Finns, who have been wife-carrying for centuries."
The prize is your wife’s weight in beer. This introduces a dilemma into the proceedings. Do you maximise your chances of winning by borrowing the more lissom wife of your neighbour (as the rules permit you to do)? This may increase your chance of winning, but you win less nectar in the process. Also, explaining to your own wife why you felt it necessary to borrow someone else’s, may not be the most comfortable of tasks.
Returning to my own manor, the plan to use my weekly long run to explore the parts that other runs do not reach — internally or externally — bore further fruit yesterday. I’d had a mail from the local running club a few days ago, reminding me that their fortnightly jaunt through the woods was due to happen yesterday. I’ve semi-intended joining up with them here for ages, but a variety of inadequate reasons have prevented me.
Yesterday, I failed again, the inadequate reason this time being a more-than-adequate breakfast. I’d woken early. Something inside me couldn’t ignore the call of the sun and the clear sky. I was up, and within minutes, fuelling on honey toast, banana and black coffee. For most runners not called Nigel, food is a contradiction — both propellant and deterrent. You don’t just need food, but food you digested 2 or 3 hours ago.
Once I’d eaten, the last thing I felt like doing was go running. When the urge finally returned, the running club would have been halfway through their 9:30 session. No matter, I decided to head off for the woods in question in any case, to take a sniff around some new territory.
The first mile or so followed my normal daily route, but instead of carrying on along the lanes, I took a path to the right, past a couple of farms and a field with a few horses in it. There was a sign on the gate which began: "POLITE ADVICE FOR HORSE THIEVES…". Inexplicably, I didn’t stop to read the rest of the sign. It’s been troubling me ever since.
Through a brief band of peaceful woodland before the Roar of a Wave That Could Drown the Whole World appeared, in the form of the M4 motorway. I turned up the volume on my iPod, and carried on over the footbridge, to Joni Mitchell’s anticipatory Chelsea Morning. Left the traffic behind and carried on through another patch of trees, then out into an open field with one path straight ahead, pointing towards a large (by local standards) hill, and another shooting off to the left, following the fringe of the copse. A moment’s hesitation, and I took the path to the left.
Running on grass is something I rarely do. Apart from my canal runs, where my feet trudge along a variety of surfaces — but mainly cinders and gravel — 95% of my running is on tarmac and concrete pavement. There isn’t a lot of excess energy in my legs, and grass drags out what little there is. Yesterday quickly reminded me of this.
I was floundering from the start, and it got worse as the meadow became softer and wetter. Panting, I reached a stile and clambered over. I jumped off, expecting to bounce forward off the grass, but instead there was a sickening splash, and I found myself at anchor. For a moment I stopped where I was, staring down at my submerged feet. I glanced back over my shoulder. Too far to retrace my steps, and anyway, my feet were already drenched, so what did it matter? I carried on across another plashy field, skipping along some emotional high-wire, like a toddler who can’t quite decide whether to giggle with glee, or bawl his head off.
By the time I reached the road, and crossed it, another half mile further on, I was past caring. My shoes squelched for England. Even my shorts were dripping. I headed up the steep hill for a hundred yards before reaching a bridleway that promised a zig-zag route to the summit. Even better, the track was dry. A mile or so further on and I found myself vanishing into a patch of forest and scrabbling up a precipitous ridge. The steepness was bad enough, but it was made worse by the soft wet mud and the gnarled tree roots that lay half concealed by it.
I know what you’re thinking but remember, I am but a trotter of solid footpath and tarmacked lane. This was more like a commando assault course than a running route. ‘Treacherous’ doesn’t do it justice. Every other step was like tossing a coin with the devil. Every other step saw my foot half vanish into the mud — and I waited for the slither that would twist a knee or the hidden hole that would snap an ankle. Mercifully, it never happened.
Eventually, another half mile or so further, I emerged from the trees and reached dry, flat tarmac at last. I’d been a ship adrift, tossed and blown and buffeted and out of control — but at last I’d found terra firma. And yet, in the words of Sweder, the indisputable king of mud maniacs, I found myself "grinning like a loon". Yes, I had to concede there was something… strangely exhilarating about mud and puddles and invisible branches that first whipped you across the face, then showered you with a gallon of rainwater before you’d even managed to finish your wince. Running can make you feel antiquated and haggard and debilitated; and almost the next moment, young and wholesome and weirdly unprocessed. Much of it is desperate and bloody, but just now and then the guards nip out for a cigarette, and you are left to liberate and to reinvent yourself.
But it was still good to have a breather by plodding along ten minutes of enamelled road. Five miles gone, and five more miles to go.
The return journey took me down the hill again but via another path. Here I remembered that scrambling down a steep, wet, muddy path is even more dangerous than scrambling up. And even more fun.
Through most of this run I was thinking, "If only people could hear the music, they’d understand". But of course that isn’t true. I had my iPod on shuffle mode, so never knew what was going to pop up next, but as so often happens, what appears in your ear frequently seems to match that which appears in your sights.
At one point, as I broke through the woods again and emerged onto a long, curling ridge overlooking the valley that would take me home again, the instrumental break in Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat slid through my head. It’s a modest minute of music but on this sunlit wintry English morning, heading home, my work almost done, it seemed to have been composed for this very moment in this very life.
LISTEN: Instrumental bit from Year of the Cat
As I reached the footbridge across the roaring motorway, it was Hendrix and Purple Haze bursting through the headphones.
Through the final familiar mile, floppy and incarnadine, the charm of squelching wearing off, dog tired. But with 10.5 miles deposited in the training account, this had been a morning well spent.
Wearily, I crunched up the gravel drive to Tom Waits and Martha. I knew that one day soon I’d be back in Sulham Woods.
Next time, perhaps I’ll take the wife.
