“You know, I never really took running that seriously if I’m being honest. When I was growing up, running was just a thing we just did. As a child you don’t over complicate anything, you just do it. I grew up on a council estate in a small town called Widnes in the Northwest of England. Everybody in that area just played outside from morning to night. My friends and I would be playing football, rugby, swimming, cycling down the canal, fishing, more football, then boxing at the local club to top it off. And if we ever needed to get from A to B, we would run.
As I got a little bit older and started venturing out of the area, I would run to and from places. Running was a form of transport, I definitely didn’t take running seriously. When I became old enough to go out drinking I would always run home from whatever pub or bar I was at. Once, I ran 11 miles from the next town over to home because I had no money for a taxi… in my dance shoes haha!
Anyway, when I was 20 I went out into the big world exploring. I travelled, partied, smoked 25 cigarettes a day and did very little exercise. I was trying to find myself at the bottom of a pint glass essentially. Then I went to South America for 8 months and I began reflecting and questioning a lot of things. I had no more distractions so I began exploring the roots of some of my behaviour patterns. I was in Bolivia volunteering up in the mountains and one day during my weekly commute into the small village market, out of the blue I said to my partner, “I’m going to run a marathon”.
Looking back now I was just reverting to something that I always fell back on; whether I was escaping something, or needed something to make me feel good about myself, I felt that I could run to gather momentum, until I fIgured out what direction I wanted to go in. So I started running with no expectations and I found out very quickly that being in the mountains for long periods of time was in fact a much simpler way to live, and it made me incredibly happy. I had a capacity to spend hours upon hours wandering around in the trails. Never do I think about rent, bills, work, social expectations… I’m just free, on my own, living on my own terms. The only thing I have to do is put one foot in front of another and that’s it. It’s so simple and it’s so freeing. Now I live in New Zealand and I run to celebrate life, to express myself. It’s spiritual for me. It’s in me.
Where I’m from most of the kids I grew up with ended up in jail or dead – and if I don’t run and use my body I feel that not only am I disrespecting nature, but I’m also disrespecting the fact that I’m alive – that I’m not honouring my existence. I’m truly grateful for life, grateful to be able to move and to have my health – so why wouldn’t I use it? When a handful of people in your close area all die before the age of 25, you realise you’re not here for a long time, so I guess I’m making the most of it by running.
In a lot of ways running has saved me. Some people play music, paint and write poetry; some of us run in the mountains.”
Conner
(Queenstown)
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