My Favourite Running Route

Writer Liz Fraser says a teary goodbye to an old friend

TOWARDS THE END OF LAST YEAR I went for a sun-kissed autumnal run along the sun-dappled towpath beside the river Cam, in Cambridge. In one sense there was nothing strange about this for me; I’ve done this run several times a week, every week, for the last 25 years. But this was different.

Around halfway along the 15km, three-foot-wide stretch of path, I spotted two herons standing tall among the reeds on the river bank. Grey, silent and elegant, they stood perfectly still and watched me run towards them, like marshals at a race – just without the day-glo bibs and cheery smiles. These particular herons have been a riverside companion of mine on many recent runs, usually flying away in disgust as I puff past, disturbing their peace; but I have almost never seen them together. Today, instead of running straight past them, I stopped in my tracks, panting, and looked at them. They didn’t move, but instead looked right back at me, not panting. ‘Goodbye’, I said. ‘And thank you for the company.’ They turned their long necks, and flew. Maybe they knew. Maybe they sensed this was my last run along the path that has been my running home for a quarter of a century. And, I allowed myself to imagine, just maybe they were saying a little goodbye, too. Or, more prosaically, but far more likely, they were off to scour the waters for dinner.

Whatever caused them to take to the wing, it was a moment I’ll never forget, one that left me with tears running down my cheeks as my feet carried me on down the path.

THAT YEAR HAD BEEN one of the strangest of my whole running life. I had been pregnant, had a baby and, after 25 years of living in the same place and running on the same path, I was on the verge of moving not only to a new city, but a new country. I’d had to say goodbye to a lot of people. (And, it turned out, some herons.)

But one goodbye saddened me more than any other, and that sadness came totally unexpectedly. It wasn’t until it happened on that last run that I realised I’ve had to say goodbye to my running path – not just literally, but also figuratively. Because it’s been my route from novice student jogger to a dedicated, addicted lover of running in my middle years. This path has taught me to run. And leaving it is a parting I’ve found really hard.

It occurred to me very suddenly that day – I’ve run along this towpath since I was 18 years old. I have run it in snow and hail, in blistering heat, wind and soaking downpours. I’ve run it with crushing hangovers, with three broken ribs after a bout of whooping cough and while pregnant through all four of my children. I’ve run it happy and bouncing on good days, or plodding and heavy after bad news; at 5am before the scorching summer sun has come up and in the pitch dark, long after it has gone down in the short days of winter.

I’ve run past many generations of swans and ducks – and herons. I have raced rowing boats up the long straight stretch, called an ambulance for a homeless lady who had overdosed on drugs, and been chased almost into the river by a herd of cows. I dealt with that particular incident magnificently, by screaming hysterically and jumping straight into the arms of a kind homeless man who happened to be nearby, and who casually shooed the cows away with one free hand. He remained one of the many ‘hello!’ passers-by I accumulated on that path.

‘LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER’ has never applied to me and, I suspect, doesn’t to most long-distance runners. Yes, running is a solitary activity for me, but somehow I never feel alone when I run. I’m in constant companionship with the terrain under my feet. The stones, grass, asphalt, leaves, slopes, boulders, sand or heather; whatever I’m running on, and the air I’m in, is my company. I touch the ground and it holds me. We talk to each other, we move in shared companionship and feel each step as a team of two, pounding away to the finish line of home.

I admit that I have actually talked to my running path many times, confided in it, asked for advice, cried during the difficult times. On other occasions, and in a way that most definitely didn’t look certifiably bonkers, I’ve often laughed out loud as I’ve run, just thinking of something funny from earlier that day. Which, now that I think of it, may explain why nobody ever seems to want to run with me.

I visit my running path when I need to think, to get away, to run towards an idea, to process news, to sketch out articles like this one, or to switch off. Quite often I will do all of these things over the course of the hour or so we spend together.

When my marriage broke down a few years ago I was so battered and exhausted I ran simply to keep moving, and I remember feeling a huge sense of companionship and familiarity with the path at a time when everything else in my life felt lost and falling away. I felt held together just by running along the curves and bumps I knew so well, and which had almost never changed in all these years. The seasons come and go; the leaves grow and fall, the ducklings arrive and move on; the rowers train and leave; the dog-walkers walk their dogs. But the stones on the path seem to stay the same, and it feels as though my feet know every single one, every bend and rise in the path, every shadow and angle of light at every time of day, through all the changing months of all the changing years.

AFTER MY CHILDREN were born my run path was the place where I got that first blissful feeling of freedom to run again after giving birth. When my grandfather died it was where I got the call with the news. I’ve done live radio interviews from the riverside, had too many emergency ‘nature’ wees in the bushes to count, had several panic attacks during my time of poor mental health, causing me to feel frightened by the hugeness of the sky. I also once generously donated most of the skin on my knees and hands to the path, after I looked up and tripped on a huge stick carefully placed there by a dog. But through all of this, it’s been there for me. It has never judged. It just listens.

That’s what I love most about my running route; it never lies. It can hurt – oh BOY, can it hurt! – but it has also given me huge pleasure over the many years we’ve spent together and, above all, it’s always brutally honest. It will tell me if I’m running like a pig, or lift my spirits to the skies when I’m on peak form and my legs are flying along it.

It’s been my friend, my therapist, my running coach and my training partner. I’ve loved it, hated it, cursed it and then missed it when I’ve been away from home or injury has kept me from spending precious time with it.

Everyone has their own ‘running home’. This, I realised once the time came to leave it, is mine. I know I’ll be back and I’ll run this path again. I’d just never expected to feel such a closeness, an almost human connection, with a stretch of stony, unspectacular pathway along a little river in England. Or to be so deeply saddened to be leaving it. Those herons had better be ready for my ‘Welcome Home’ party, one day.

THIS PATH HAS TAUGHT ME TO RUN