I am a creature of habit. I like my tea and toast in the morning, I sit in the same seat on the sofa to watch TV and I run the routes I am most familiar with, most of the time. It's boring, predictable and like being trapped in my own version of Groundhog Day, which is why I decided to try something radical when I strapped on my trainers last night, something that would push me out of my comfort zone and help me to cast off the shackles of routine.
I was going to run my usual route, but in reverse!
You only have to cast your eyes over my Strava run record to see that I have a handful of routes that I love. I enjoy testing myself on the segments I know so well and take comfort from knowing the routes like the back of my hand. I run these routes on autopilot, every turn, every hill, every crossing, junction, pavement and trail, they are all so familiar and require no thought whatsoever. However, I always run them the same way, starting and finishing at the same point and sticking rigidly to the clockwise or anti-clockwise routes I have always taken. Until yesterday.
Throwing caution to the wind, with the kind of careless abandon usually reserved for those rare occasions I choose Shreddies over muesli , I decided that I would run an ultra-familiar 45 minute route the wrong way.
So I set off, turning left at the end of my road instead of right, and so began an entirely new run. It was genuinely liberating, every road seemed different, every hill became a descent and every descent a climb, I noticed houses, gardens, roads and scenery that I had never registered before. I was seeing my home town and the roads I knew so well in an entirely new light. The route was the same, but the run was a true first.
The bizarre thing, however, was that running in reverse added around a minute to my time. I can only put this down to the fact that I was taking in my surroundings more and concentrating on where I was going, which suggests, of course, that familiarity makes you faster.
But it wasn't about time last night, I felt like I'd discovered a new route, and it felt great. So next time you set out on your favourite run, turn around and go the other way, you won't regret it.
