Running – the sport of kings,

There’s an egalitarianism about running that’s hard to find in other sports. Not everyone is going to be able to experience what it’s like to throw a buzzer-beating three pointer in a championship basketball game.

Few of us will be able to feel what it’s like to sweep past the chequered flag in a Superbike World Championship race.

Hardly anyone is going to know the feeling of throwing the touchdown-winning pass in a Superbowl.

But getting out the door and going for a run is a sporting challenge billions of people can tackle. You don’t need anyone else to do it (though it’s fun to run with friends), you don’t need any specialist equipment (a pair of shoes generally helps, but even they’re not essential), and you can do it anywhere.

Sure, we might not all be capable of striding as fast as Eliud Kipchoge or Paula Radcliffe (the fastest man and woman marathoners), but we all know what that smile at the finish line feels like.

On my bedroom wall when I was a kid there was a Nike poster of a bunch of athletes floating along a dusty African trail, their faces utterly relaxed, their arms efficiently swaying at their side, their legs in synchronicity. Written on the poster was: ‘‘In my mind, I am a Kenyan’’.

And it’s a feeling I’ve often had. Sure, sometimes running is a chore – the act of getting up the merest of hills can be a slog. But other times, in my mind, I feel like any number of the champions who glide smoothly along the paths and hills of the Rift Valley in Kenya, home of so many Olympians.

(Although, I recently saw evidence that fantasy and reality are far removed. Running towards the end of the Kepler Challenge race, I felt smooth and metronomic – in my mind I was Kipchoge. Then a friend who was running with me posted a video of us, and I realised my running style at that stage of the race was more akin to Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame.)

That egalitarianism applies no matter what distance you’re running, though, lately, there’s been a bit of a trend developing which I don’t like.

It happens when there are