I’ve missed mud. That feels like a very odd sentence to write, not least given the amount of the stuff I’ve cleaned off shoes and swept out of the hall this winter. But today I ran in it again, for the first time since September, and I remembered quite how much fun it is.
To run on muddy trails is to get as close to childhood joy as adult life allows. There is such a sensory delight to be found in the squelch under my feet, the suction I have to work against each time I lift a foot back up. It isn’t long before it’s working its way through my shoes, thick and wet between my toes. The sensations may not all be pleasant, but they are physical, demanding moments of intense focus on my body. So much of adult life prioritises our intellectual capacities, it feels rare to get the chance to focus solely on the body. Even running doesn’t usually manage it, as all those life thoughts run through the mind and demand attention. But running in mud provides constant sensory feedback which helps keep my mind still. Even when the run is over, there is nothing like the satisfaction of getting in the shower and having to scrub mud off my feet, a sure sign of a great run.
Before lockdown hit last year, I was well on my way to becoming a connoisseur of mud. I’d run a night race in the Forest of Dean, nearly 6 miles of thick, forest mud, sucking at me with every footstep, with some fantastic descents sliding down through the trees, glissading on the mud. Two days later, I joined some colleagues for a night run in the Vale of Glamorgan, again through muddy forest tracks, but this time down to the fields, where the mud was a whole new, watery delight. That one left me coming home and getting into the shower fully dressed to hose myself down!
There was a period where every run I did saw me come home plastered with mud and beaming. Inevitably this eased off as the summer arrived, but if you look hard enough here in Wales, there’s always mud to be found. On one of the hottest days of last summer, a friend and I were delighted when we found a muddy trail in the woods on the edge of Cardiff. The perfect antidote to sweltering heat.
It’s exactly that delight that I love. The knowledge that a muddy run, even a muddy section on a run, brings with it a stillness of mind that is hard to replicate elsewhere, and a wonderfully strong sense of how alive my body really is. That really is running at its very best.
I Run Free 