In my uber to Battersea Park, the driver asked me: ‘why do you run?’ The question stumped me at first, perhaps because so much of the training I do is unconscious - a part of my daily routine, one of my non-negotiables. That’s not to say that running is a thoughtless activity - I often catch the day’s best ideas during that hour of exertion (and sometimes have to stop to write them down!) But it is also a space that can be, thankfully, apart from thought, a brief spot of time where you only have to consider moving one foot in front of the other. I guess it’s this immersion in the body that draws people to other activities like yoga or breathwork - calming the mind through exerting the body. During training sessions, the ability to access this ‘thoughtlessness’ is particularly useful; three quarters through your reps, when everything in your body is telling you to stop, when your brain slyly convinces you to take a quick breather and sit the next rep out, being able to switch off that voice is one of the only ways to continue. Running allows me to access states of mind that are impossible to recreate in any other part of my life, feelings of exhaustion and elation that are both humbling (in their reminder of our all-too-human limits), yet also infinitely expanding. When I lace up my shoes each day and head out onto the paths and roads, it’s this expansion of mind that I anticipate, long for, crave. It’s what keeps me placing one foot ahead of the other, over and over again, until I can’t anymore.