Tag: running

Project365 #45

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

Today’s picture: the track I’m making on the local playing field.

Just recently I’ve taken to running laps and laps and laps of my local playing field when I go for a run.

Today it was 20.

Why the hell do you do that? I hear you ask.

Well, let me explain:

  • The playing field is right opposite the house so it’s very convenient.
  • The village has no paths or lights, so I when I’ve got headphones on, I’m always looking out for traffic. On the field I can put the headphones on and not worry about being wiped out by a passing tractor!
  • Builds resilience. The lap is only about 400m, so you end up doing quite a few.
  • It’s also on grass, which is good for the joints, but power sapping, so you get a good workout.

Book 3 of 2026 📚

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

‘And So I Run’ by Jamie Doward.

A running book – first one of the year.

I wasn’t really enjoying this book too much at the start, it was a bit depressing and a bit repetitive. The simplified summary is the author is trying to run a sub-3 hour marathon. Although it is much more than that, it follows his journey as he uses running as an escape from life, his guilt, his grief, his despair, finding a way through a life that is unravelling.

He talks a lot about his life and about life and ‘shameless posturing of our global leaders when everything is going to shit’ and how they have a ‘complete lack of empathy for normal people, a collective failure to act in an era of existential crisis’. Which, of course, I couldn’t agree more.

But about running, he also says:

These days I run to feel powerful in an era when it is all too easy to feel powerless. I run because I believe running is a supreme of of defiance, a refusal to obey norms and conventions. To run is to fight.