Carys
Running was pure. It was simplicity. There was no day-to-day, no juggling all of the usual crap that came with everything else.
Not having ten things bouncing around inside your head at the same time.
With running there was only one thing: don’t stop.
Keep going. Don’t surrender to the burning in your lungs, the iron-heaviness of your legs, don’t listen to the little voice in your head that says just take a little rest, give yourself a breather, just for a minute.
She also knew it was bad form to stick to the same old route, week after week, however pretty the scenery might be.
Even if it was the most accurate way of comparing one time with another.
Overall, it was better to get used to novelty, to terrain she’d never seen before.
Especially if she was going to have a chance at that ultra-marathon in Norway.
The local marathon had been fine, and the Iron Man and the other events, but it was better to challenge herself, to do something different—she would be able to get more in sponsorship for the charity that way.
She’d be able to achieve the target she’d set herself by the end of the year, keep the promise she’d made.
She climbed through the stile, up the track toward the big field, the familiar burn in her legs and lungs telling her to keep going, keep pushing. Rolling countryside stretching out below the ridge as she climbed.
Being out here, doing something, anything, was preferable to the helplessness she’d felt as her dad slowly faded away, a spectator to the slow cruelty of a disease as it ravaged his body.
That vast bottomless feeling that nothing could be done apart from sitting and waiting for the inevitable.
And, most important of all, it was peaceful.
The quietest route, especially on a weekday.
You might see a few ramblers, the occasional runner, but mostly it was just sheep out here.
No ogling teenagers, no catcalling builders, no white van men hooting and shouting disgusting things as she ran by.
No idiot ex who wasn’t willing to accept that it was over between them.
Out here she was unencumbered, just the key on its key ring zipped inside her pocket, stopwatch running on her wrist, trainers pounding the path. It was pure. Simple.
She nodded to a runner coming the other way, dressed in dark orange and pale green.
Something vaguely familiar about the stride, the smile.
It would be good to have a pacer, Carys thought.
A running buddy to give her that little bit extra motivation when the mornings were cold and dark, like this one.
Someone else who understood the beauty of it all.