Accidental running

I have helped to create two happy accidents in running. 

I devoted much of my career to Digital Signal Processing - a highly mathematical branch of real-time, high-speed, computing whose subtle and complex nature fascinated me, and in which I loved being involved. Late in that career I wrote several books, encapsulating insights I had been privileged to have explained to me by many great people I worked with, and that I felt were valuable to pass on to others. I didn't write them as text books: I wanted to inspire others to enter or continue in my field, and I wanted to help change that field from a dry mathematical purist academic study accessible only to those with a specialist education to PhD level, to a living, fascinating, human endeavour accessible to anyone with the diligence and motivation to pursue it. It is a passion I had, to change that little part of my world - to push aside the traditional academic gatekeepers and the worthy but dull mathematical approach to it, and show people it is a field that can be understood, and worked in effectively, with varied  educational backgrounds.

Three of those books are, I think, the best I have ever written.

But my best selling book is about running, slowly.

I wrote that book for fun. I had started to run - really, started again because I had run a bit beforehand - to restore fitness after a high cholesterol test. Bringing myself back to healh was a much longer, more exhausting, process than I thought but the turning point was when I started to enjoy it - to get real pleasure from running for its own sake. Cycling was an alternate exercise - cross-training, where one exercises but in a different sport to avoid over-training - and since cycling is faster than running I was able to range farther afield, to find and enjoy lots of beautiful, interesting and challenging local routes. At that time Sky TV and British Cycling launched Sky Ride Local - local rides, led by trained Ride Leaders, with the aim of introducing more people to cycling for fun, locally, and safely. Training was provided, so long as you promised to lead at least one ride a month for a year. The training was fun, and so were the rides - very much about safe, considerate cycling but also with route planning so the rides were enjoyable. Being a Sky Ride Leader brought me to the attention of Active Surrey, who were working with Run England to promote running - and with an aim parallel to that of Sky Ride Local, to introduce running to lots of non-runners, as a leisure pursuit rather than racing, through group runs led by trained Run Leaders. Again, the emphasis was on safety - in running, particularly, avoiding the common trap of injuries through going too far, too fast, too soon into which too many new runners fall. During our Run Leader training the trainer told me of a technique she used to help new runners who were embarrased at being seen running because they were so slow: it was, to learn to run as slowly as possible while still 'looking like a runner'. In return for our Run Leader training we had to commit to set up, and lead for at least a year, a free local running group. I tried several local groups to see what they were like and to gain ideas as to how to set up a new one that would offer something different. All the groups I tried were well led: but all also focussed on speed. It wasn't only the leaders but the runners too - speed was the goal - running faster, surpassing a Personal Best. I remember one session when we reached the base of a local steep hill, which I would usually approach with caution, readying myself for a long slow slog to the top. But the chap I was running beside did not slow: instead, he called out "Race you to the top!" and set off at a ferocious pace - as did everyone else, leaving me trailing behind even though I did my best to keep up. That was when I realised I didn't really want to run fast - I just wanted to run  - and I thought, there must be others like me, who cannot find a place for themsleves in a run group with fit, keen, fast runners but might if the group was slower. And I thought back to my Run Leader trainer, and her slow running, and I knew I had my theme.

So my run group - St Johns Run for Fun, because our village is St Johns in Woking - started with the central theme of running slowly. Well, really, the slow running was to avoid injury and help people to stick with it - and thanks to my Run Leader training I had some fun technqiues to use, and had great fun inventing my own by adapting methods and ideas from the many running books I was consuming at the time. What I did not realise was that most runners do indeed want to run fast - and get faster - and many don't want to run in a group anyway, they prefer to run alone. So my group gained many new members quickly, and lost almost as many to faster training groups. But some stayed, because some people are either naturally, or want to be, slow runners. The other thing I had not realised was that people like to make friends. I think I am an extroverted introvert - hyper-social but instinctively anti-social - I make friends easily, love meeting and enjoying the company and friendship of people, but am actually quite anti-social in that I am content with my own company and to a certain extent can be remarkably unaware of all the social things going on around me. So when I set up Run for Fun I had a serious purpose that I had thought through with a well-developed plan. The group would be inclusive, based on the slow running - we would run as slowly as the slowest, so as a group - not strung out with the slowest gasping and panting to catch up and eventually falling by the wayside. We would do silly exercises, because if we all did embarrassing things together then we would not actually be that embarrassed, because we would be laughing too much. And crucially, we would moderate our pace by talking. Talking is an excellent way to pace yourself: if you can carry on a decent conversation while running, then you are probably running at about 80% of your maximum heart rate, which is a good steady pace that you can maintain for ages. You can't go too fast if you are talking, and you can't run ahead because then there is no-one to talk to - so talking was the one rule of the group: you had to talk while running. (You can see why I lost almost as many members as I gained.) Each of the rules and techniques of the group were carefully thought through, with the aim of creating and maintaining group cohesion and encouraging steady, injury-free running - the fun aspect was serious in intent.

What I had not realised - amazing as it now seems - was that chatting and laughing and making fools of ourselves would create and maintain friendships: real enduring friendships. We joke now that coffee after a run lasts longer than the runs themselves - but the group has been running together almost every weekend now for nearly six years, and I think the friendships will last for life. But I don't claim credit for anything other than founding the group - it was a happy accident, unintended, that friendships grew out of that - and it is the friendships, the support for and inspiration from and caring about each other - that keeps the group together, not me as its notional Run Leader. I count it as one of the best social things I have done, to found the run group, and I am still sort of surprised at what a happy accident that was.

I wrote my running book for fun. It is called Slow Running. I just thought it might be nice to record, to collate and explain, what I had learnt from Run Leader training and books and from leading the run group - and to try to help to promote the idea that Slow Running is still running - that running slow is OK, not failure. So I wrote it, and enjoyed doing so, and I think it is an OK book - quite good, really, but quite simple and brief because its message is simple and brief: don't go too far, too fast, too soon. It has a couple of times surged into the Amazon best-seller lists: in its category of 'books on running' that isn't quite New York Times material, but it is nice anyway. But the book isn't the second happy accident. To let readers connect with me, and with each other, I formed a Facebook Group - also called Slow Running. That group chugged along quite happily for a while, and a lot of poeple joined it for itself rather than having read my book. People in the group posted pictures of their runs, distances, experiences - and other members 'liked' those posts, commented, encouraged, told how they themeslves felt inspired by other members. The Facebook group now has more than 1,600 members - most of whom I think have never read my book - and I take great joy in reading when someone says how glad they are to have found such a supportive, inspiring, motivating group of friends. It truly amazes me - I check the Facebook group regularly but often do not post anything myself for quite a while - and I see dialogue, support, gratitude, all going on without me - just like my real-life run group, really - a group of suppportive friends, created by accident.

So my two happy accidents are the same, in a way - I accidentally created groups, who became friends, and friendship is what sustains us - inclduing keeping us running.