Head down. Legs forward. Keep breathing.

It feels good to be out. To be moving. To be running. Usually it begins by pacing around my kitchen in darkness, picking up damp faded hoodies, all in a permanent cycle of over-washing and sweat. The endless debate in my head over whether to eat bananas or not eat bananas, drink water or not drink water. The attempts to put it off as long as possible, fighting the need to go.

When I first ran my brain screamed every second of the way for me to stop. And after about ten minutes I complied. Gradually things opened out, an extra five minutes here, less wheezing there as I tried to reach the golden gate which all habitual runners pass through: effortless endurance of thirty minutes of continuous motion.

I was never a sportsperson or athlete in my youth. Childhood asthma and terminally hapless coordination put an end to that. The closest I came to anything like this was being forced to do cross country running in school. Always at the back of a pack of boys, silently suffocating. But it turns out my inner runner was just lying dormant waiting for me to mature into some sort of vintage, middle-aged aerobic prime.

Most days there’s an absolute necessity to find the perfect playlists. Sometimes I need metronomic krautrock, but not obvious stuff like Neu! or the Best of Can. Other times I crave lo-fi guitars, with laconic prose about bewilderment and everything tumbling down the stairs. Pavement. And all the knock off Pavement bands of the last twenty years.

I reach into the pocket of my grey cut off tracksuit shorts. I pull out my headphones and press play, Iggy already waiting for me. The bass of Down On the Street pulsing mechanically like long forgotten pistons in Detroit factories. The drums and cymbals relentlessly jabbing, the whole song as wired and coiled and cut lean of fat as a song can be. As it explodes under Ron Asheton’s volley of guitars I run past the evergreen trees and early flowering blossom. See the warm glow of amber behind curtains. Fuzzy suns of bedroom lamps, and the stomach-acid-scream of kitchen strip lighting in the windows of detached houses to my left. Commuters waking into their daily rituals.

I go straight across the road and turn towards Balmore Hill. The mist rising around my feet like flames, the whole ground ablaze. A red kite is circling directly above, so low I can make out the delicate burnt orange flecks and tips of white in the creases between feathers. I feel like we’re an extension of the same. The black pins of its eyes are my eyes. Our vision in flight over the patchwork of England’s cowering gardens. The polluted sky ours to roam.

I run and keep running harder until I reach the woods. Everything feeling lighter, easier now. The pull of nature so strong it almost feels like the soil is trying to reclaim me.

Head down. Legs forward. Keep breathing.