This Is The Best Running Advice You’ll Ever Get

(David Mark/Pixabay)

I’ve run since I was seven-years-old. I went to a boys boarding school, and we ran every morning. If we were too slow, we would do it again in the evening. In the dark.

I got pretty good. I ran in UK county championships, and even ran once in a national race. I haven’t competed since school, but everywhere I’ve lived, and there have been a lot of places, I’ve run.

I don’t think about running. I just do it. No stretching. I just put on a pair of shorts, a tatty T-shirt, my trainers — none of this lightweight running garb — and run.

I work on a farm in Normandy, and if I need to get from field A to field B, I run it. An inbuilt response, a memory, derived from years of running at six o’clock in the morning.

I also have a training circuit around the perimeter of the farm. It’s about 5 km with hills and tracks and streams. I can do it in about 22 minutes.

I’m 47 now, so that’s not a bad time for a guy who enjoys a drink most evenings.

Anyhow, shortly before Christmas, my running shoes, after three years of constant use, fell to pieces. Strapped for cash, I couldn’t afford to replace them. So I started running in my steel toe-capped work boots, acquired when I worked in an Aldi warehouse years ago.