Here’s the text for the 5 February 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.
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I’ve been running since my early-twenties. I started for the health benefits after my GP said I needed to lower my cholesterol. But I’ve stayed with it for the room it opens up in my brain, the peace it transfuses into my veins.
When I got sober, I joked that I’d traded alcohol for free drugs from God which running gave me access to.
For me, running’s not really about competing. In a parkrun or road-race, it’s more about the joy of being with others. Generally I’m not trying to beat anybody – except for that one guy in the Darth Vader costume who sprinted past me in the last leg of the London Marathon.
If I’m competing against anybody, it’s myself. This obsession intensified in my thirties when I bought a sports watch that tracks my mileage, heart-rate, and especially my speed – which an exercise app then graphs. As I pushed myself for a faster and faster time, I loved watching the graph’s trend-line rise.
But as I approach my fifties, that trend-line’s started sagging and lately it’s pretty much plummeted.
Part of me fights that. When a young runner-friend of mine, Ali, started a regime of exercises recently to increase his pace, I heard this voice in my head: “Trey, if you train just as hard, for your 50th birthday in 2025, you can defy the odds with your fastest-marathon-ever!”
I even consulted a coach who said he’d help me, but he also said: “When you started running 25 years ago, it was, you know … 25 years ago. You’re older now – that’s no bad thing. Is there anything wrong with slowing down?”
Underneath the ambitious part of me, another part of me felt relief.
We’re not all runners, of course, but probably we’ve all in some way felt the pressure of the world on our shoulders to get faster and grow stronger.
What I’m learning from Jesus, my real-life coach, is that sometimes it’s better to get slower and grow humbler. In the Bible, Jesus is always coaching people to come to him for rest, to slow down enough to look at the birds or talk to somebody.
In early sobriety, someone said “I wish you a slow recovery”. At first I didn’t understand what they meant but I’ve come to treasure that advice. I believe the good life isn’t about relentlessly pursuing better measurements, or being driven by the obsession of winning, but instead being freed to love the slow pace of living life as it actually comes.