To run, fleet and eternal…

I realised, sometime after reading another rejection email from the UTMB ballot, that somewhere along the journey my relationship to the sport has changed: it’s stopped being so much fun.

I remember in the summer of 2018, driving to the foot of Helvellyn, posting a T.S Eliot quote that said, ‘If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?’, and having at it. I’d ran trails but never up anything that big and spent the next six hours bagging Wainwrights after Wainwright and feeling like the whole world lay before me.

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

The year after, for the first time, I specifically chose a holiday destination so I could run up a mountain. I started with my feet in the Mediterranean and ran to the summit of Pico del Cielo and back.

Over the next few years I’d race in some amazing places, but I’d also regularly just go run places because they were beautiful and it felt good. Running in the mountains was a tremendous adventure, being exhilarated by moving my body in symbiosis with nature.

And I still do enjoy running, but over the years some other things crept in. In 2021 I finished a race, Ultra Trail Sierra de Cazorla, and one of the reasons I chose it and pushed through the urge to quit was to gain entry to the UTMB ballot. I’m still glad I finished, it was a beautiful local race, but it marked a subtle shift in my relationship to running.

Over the coming years my running has became more goal oriented rather than dream oriented, and here’s what I mean by that: for as long as I’ve ran, I’ve had goals and targets, but motivation for them was generally from inside of me. I’d want to know if I could, or I’d want to experience a particular thing, or dream of a particular place. The goals only had value because they came from somewhere deeper.

I worked really hard to attempt the Bob Graham Round twice because it’s a dream of mine to complete it. So while the Bob was a goal, it came from a dream, it wasn’t arbitrary. It was the product of reading Feet in the Clouds and obsessing over the mythos of it. Of driving along the A66 in breathless wonder at the beauty of it all.

When I first decided to run the Bob, I wrote that I reserved the right to fail but I also reserved the right to dream. I want that spirit back. When Georgia and I flung ourselves at the West Highland Way with zero prep beyond a trip to Fort William Morisson’s and a shared idea? That’s what it was about. Running was an adventure.

I reserve the right to fail – but I also reserve the right to dream.

Somewhere my year’s running started to be structured much more around other things. If you want to run UTMB, you have to do lots of their events, you have to build your schedule around gathering ballot entries, improving your index, and waiting on ballot results. You avoid August and September races incase you get in. The rhythm of your year becomes adapted to it. And it’s not that all of those things are bad in themselves, but you know what they’re not? They’re not running for the joy it brings.

My distaste for the culture and behaviour of UTMB was always in conflict with my desire to run the race. But it’s not just about an organisation, the conflict exists inside my own psyche too. Capitalism commodifies everything in life, pushes us to a place where to have value a thing must be enumerated. And if we don’t consciously push against that prevailing culture then even the most magical things can lose their shine. Every so often, I just need to look at my relationship to the sport and realign to my values.

I was annoyed when I got the email to say I’d not got a place in UTMB, but the first thing I did was open my browser at the tabs I had open with alternate hundred mile races. And I realised that the leading candidate wasn’t even a route I particularly wanted to run, entering would simply be putting stress on my body to tick a box and say I’d done it. It felt like just a symptom of being trapped on the treadmill of a sport that’s become increasingly professionalised, increasingly about numbers rather than emotions. But trail running is a soul sport, it was never supposed to be this way.

So instead of booking a miler or immediately filling my summer with a new goal I decided to enjoy the races I have in, and focus on regaining the joy in the journey. Do the races I want to do because they look fun. Push myself over shorter distances because being able to send hard is an unmitigated delight. Go to races friends are at because spending time with people you like is joyful. Because the friendships trail running brings are worth so much more than the races and the brands and the constant churn of media.

I’m not boycotting UTMB races. I have some coming up, but I’m not going to allow the idea of running a particular race dominate my relationship to the sport. There’s a marketing push to make us feel like these things are essential but they’re not. If at some point I get a spot to run the big loop I will, but a multi-million pound industry shouldn’t dictate where our joy comes from, or diminish that joy based on their control of a marketplace.

Up until summer, I’m going to run races around the 50km mark. Long enough to challenge but also a distance that allows a quicker tempo and, importantly for me given my last couple of years, are easier to recover from physically. I will see some beautiful places and run with some wonderful people. I’ve got my eye on a 100km late in the year that has been on my bucket list for years, but I have a big gap where there’s normally a challenge.

I’ve still got a whole heap of dreams, from the Bob Graham Round to unfinished business with the West Highland Way, and some even longer than those. I may choose to pursue one this year or I may not, because the most important thing isn’t ticking a box but getting my mojo back. I’ll decide what’s next from a place of joy, not desperation.

In Time of the Child, Niall Williams describes a generation of Irish boys, inspired by Olympian Ronnie Delaney.

With a kind of breathless fidelity to excellence, there were boys fleet and eternal, who ran barefoot, ran without strategy, know-how or training, ran for gold medals unsmelted and imaginary, but more, because when they ran they were free.

That’s what I want for my running. Not a medal from a specific race, a gilet from a mega corp, or a line in my instagram bio saying I’ve ran a particular distance. I want to run, fleet and eternal, because when I run I am free and the spirit of adventure still courses through these veins.