‘ON WILD WINDY DAYS I LONG TO BE OUT’

Jane Fallon

Novelist Jane Fallon on the mind and body benefits of her favourite muse – running

Ialways had a love/hate relationship with running – until I injured my ankle and couldn’t do it any more, that is. Now I’ve forgotten everything I didn’t like about it; the random aches in my joints, the feeling that I must look ridiculous. All I can remember is the freedom, the joy of pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion, the weird satisfaction of working your body till it hurts.

When I was young it was my way to get accepted. Able to outsprint all my classmates, I always got picked first for teams despite my shyness and lack of social skills. Luckily for me no one ever asked me to run further than a couple of hundred metres, because I would have had to let them down. My talent only existed in short bursts.

As an adult I had to accept that I was not a natural distance runner. Anything more than about 400 metres had me gasping and wheezing like a broken accordion. My legs would give up immediately, as if they knew they would never last the course so why even try? So once I decided I wanted to give it another go some time in my mid-40s, in an effort to shed a few pounds, I had to force myself into it. I built up slowly over what seemed like many months until I could just about manage five kilometres if I ran very slowly. And then I couldn’t stop. I went out almost every day – rarely for longer than 30 minutes – puffing around the neighbourhood, red-faced and sweating and feeling something that can only be described as