Running and drawing...

...and a whole new experience of time

I loved the day we ran past this incredibly beautiful red bothy. It sleeted, it snowed, it rained. The colours were all brighter because everything was wet and the snow gave such beautiful contrast.

Last weekend, I ran further than I ever could have imagined. After many years of assisting my Dave to compete in ultra running trail events, last year I decided that I wanted to see if I too could do such a thing. Each time I helped him race, I watched people of all ages, genders and body types carry themselves across insane distances of countryside, usually in beautiful places, to a finish line. And I decided that maybe I wanted to try. I was curious. I wondered what my body could do. So, last year I signed up for an event. And, on Saturday, with complete and utter uncertainty about whether or not I could do it, I got up at 4am and stood at dawn on the starting line to run 69km across some of Scotland’s most spectacular mountainous countryside.

I have always been a runner. Most of my life, most weeks, I have gone out running. Usually not far, and never with any distance or time goals - but just to feel good, relax, and enjoy travelling across the terrain around me using my body. Running quietened my irritatingly busy mind. It was something I did without comparison or measurement. It has always been my escape from the busy world into myself.

But, I knew to have any chance of running this super long trail race I would need to actually train, so Dave made me a spreadsheet (wild) - and I started running with measured purpose. I often got wet. I ran through storms. I learned to run (slowly) on snow and ice. I ran up so many many hills on mud and rocks and tried to learn how to run down slopes of scree and stones and heather. I spent so much time in the company of the wind and the weather. The days were so short. And running filled so many of my winter daylight hours.

And I got really really really tired.

I also got slightly worried. I became very boring. I also felt a little like my identity was getting messed with. I have never been a sports fan or keen participant. And for the last decade my obsessive energy has gone into painting and drawing and making books. So through the winter, as I directed a large amount of my energy somewhere else, I started to feel like I was cheating on my artist self. I was still working, drawing and painting and writing my first stories (exciting). But for the first time in a long time, being an artist/illustrator/creator didn’t feel like all I was.

Photos taken out running in the beautiful Pentlands on the edge of Edinburgh

And I thought I better paint it too… I look more like I’m walking here… (which was definitely what was happening any time I met a hill).

But even though I felt kind of guilty, I also liked it. I feel like my winter affair with running - including reading about running and watching ultra running documentaries on youtube - was a break from myself. A little holiday. And also, a nice levelling out, a balancing, a reminder that I am not (only or at all?) my art.

Being a body in this most beautiful world.

There is nothing like a winter spent outside with my body being battered by hills, mud and weather, to really bring home the magic that it can be to be a human alive right now in this beautiful world.

I ran with rainbows. I saw deer, foxes, fields of geese and as spring began to break witnessed by first ever toad orgy. I ran carrying a big stick, scared of being attacked by “an aggressive male Capercaille” (a giant Turkey like bird so rare in Scotland that Dave was hoping that we did get attacked because it is such a rarity to see one). We saw a big group of male black grouse (also rare) getting ready to display for the spring breeding season, teeny mice, and I nearly stood on a rat. I saw kingfishers, breathed the coldest crispest air and ran alongside groups of Scotlands hairy cows.

And at the same time as I inhaled beauty, my body really hurt. It was hard. My legs protested as I inched my way up hills. I tried to work out how to eat and run and not feel ill. I hurt a calf muscle. I saw a physio. I rested. I pulled the skin off my back from rubbing on my bag. We got so cold. My longest training run was with 60mph winds and rain and it was hard to stay upright, let alone move forward. I cooked and carried and ate so many potatoes (a good food to eat while running it turns out). I worried about how and where to go to the loo. I have never felt so aware of my body.

One wonderful run in a week of incredibly beautiful running in the Cairngorms.

Same week… different vibe! We had a lot of snow that week..

More running… beautiful turquoise lakes, old pines and a sprinkle of snow.

Painting the beautiful run through sparkling old pine forests and a light sprinkle of snow.

And I loved this too.

The increasing penetration of technology into every element of our lives, can really make me forget my body, and distract me from the world that we are actually inseparable from. Embracing the digital realm has been such a huge part of making an income as an artist and illustrator and this has meant regular tuning in to a world I can only see through a screen, one owned by a few men (who are proving to be most awful) and governed by algorithms outside of my control. And as I ran through the cold of this last winter, the world of AI heated up, and the connection between tech companies and so many horrors became increasingly clear. The places online that have always felt worthwhile (despite always being problematic) are feeling increasingly unappealing. And as I ran, I felt more and more averse to the world that those who are ushering in AI with such joy (or even a despondent sense of inevitability) seem to want.

Photos taken while running the beautiful Cornwall Coast Path… one of my favourite corners of the world.

I don’t want a world that celebrates efficiency or increased productivity as a goal onto its own. I don’t want to sacrifice a beautiful, flawed, humbling world of toad orgies and migrating geese for one that prioritises robots and screens. I don’t want to ‘overcome’ the ‘flaws’ of being human - they are that which makes life interesting and remarkable. I don’t want an increasingly bland and beige world. I don’t want to do things only because they’re measurable. And I don’t want the crunching of big data to dictate what I do. I don’t want a machine to help me compose my sentences (even if it’s faster). I want the slow struggle. I want it to be hard - the good things in life usually are. We are not machines, at our happiest when most productive. I think humans are happy when we’re allowed to be our wonderfully messy, awkward selves, even if this makes us slow, unproductive and inefficient.

“I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.” Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

My colleague shared this quote with me from the ever wise Rebecca Solnit and suggested that we adopt a policy of moving no more than 3 miles per hour (she doesn’t like running). And although I might up the mileage a tiny bit, I cast my vote for a future that wants this kind of slow, thoughtful, embodied life for us all, and I feel like my winter of running really helped me experiment living in this zone.

Impressionistic drawings of what it felt like to run in the wild of the wind and the drama of the mountains

Post race scribble of the incredible drama of the landscape we ran through.

The race… and a whole new experience of time

So, last Saturday, at dawn, I stood in the starting carrell with about 500 other jittery runners. All dressed in rain gear (we were expecting a drenching) with vests full of water and food, wondering what we were doing there and waiting for the thing we’d all trained for for months to begin. There was music. There were congratulations for making it to the starting line. All the sheep in the adjacent paddock came to the edge to peer down at us through their fence to see what was going on. There was a countdown and we all set off… up the first of many many hills.

And so off I ran.

Training for this run was the first time I have ever really paid attention to how far I was running or for how long. I measured each run on an app on my phone. But I decided for this super long run, of a distance I had only ever ran half of before, that I didn’t want tech involved. I wanted to run as I had always ran, just for the joy of the journey. So, I turned off all data and stopped all the apps. I may well have been the only one running without a fancy watch telling me how far I’d come and in what time (and thus also how far to go). Some people I ran with for bits of the race had alarms going… telling them when to eat. But as soon as I started running I realised how pleased I was to run free of any tech influencing my idea of how well I was or wasn’t going.

Instead of doing any thinking about the past or the future, all I had to do was keep going, look around, enjoy the scenery, and put one step forward and then another.

And I existed for almost nine hours in a new realm of time.

I feel like there are things in life that I have read, or that people have told me, that I think I understand when I first hear them, but then one day a life experience suddenly makes me really understand and actually know what they were talking about. I remember a teacher, years ago, saying if I learn to believe in my drawing talent without ego or pride I would go a long way. Even though I understood the sentence, it took me decades to actually feel like I knew what he meant. I also remember reading somewhere that ‘there is nothing lonelier then being in the wrong career’. I read this when I was an academic and it triggered something in me. But, it wasn’t until I was in the right career that I realised just how true this is.

I feel like last Saturday, as I ran up and down relentlessly stony paths over hills, that I suddenly really understood what it meant to fully exist only in the present moment. Drawing does that for me briefly. And I’m sure people that meditate (I’m crap at that) feel it too. But on that run, I had almost 9 hours of it. I never knew how far I had to go, or how far I had gone, or what time it was and I never even thought about these things. All I knew was that I needed to keep trying to run, keep putting one step in front of the other, and I did this with nothing but pure curiousity about how long I might be able to do it for.

And slowly, I inched my way over the ups and downs of the beautiful trail, soaking in the views and the little bits of conversation. Losing the tech helped me relinquish all attempts at control and in doing so I felt so completely free. It unleashed a calm joy I didn’t know I had in me. And, with this incredible delight that I now know really only comes with being fully alive to the moment, I made it across the entire journey, running almost the entire 69km. And, I think I smiled the whole way.

One of the most beautiful places to run in the world… the coast path of Cornwall! Gorse and sea all bright with colour even in the winter time.