A writer running wild with his words

What was it Frank Zappa said? “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

At least in his case, writing and music can be tenuously linked as ‘arts’ – but writing and running? As alike – to quote Shakespeare – “as a crab’s like an apple.”

There are times I’ve scurried across grassy hillsides like a crab, and times when I’ve bounced down scree-slopes like a chucked apple, but I get the point. Running, especially the kind of running I champion, is about mud and trail, rain and hail. About being outside, getting physical with whatever nature throws at you. And writing is about, well, it’s about cups of tea, a laptop screen, some scruffy notes and a deadline. But there is, for me, a connection between the two, and I’d describe it ham-fistedly as the pursuit of meaning.

When I’m off up Otley Chevin in the middle of a summer cloudburst, thunder rumbling somewhere over Skipton and lightning cracking somewhere a lot nearer, I get a feeling for my place in the world. The world under my feet, what we politically call ‘the environment’ but which to runners is mud, glorious mud. The squelchy brown stuff that sustains everything.

And writing is, at its best, a similar attempt to capture a bit of sense, explain things, understand stuff. What’s Shakespeare’s drama if not a way of talking about the world, about love and fear and power? To stretch the comparison, I’d say that the average corporate-sponsored urban fun run roughly equates to an article in Hello! magazine: instant gratification with little long-lasting effect. And that a day out running on the hills of the English Lake District compares broadly to something by (for instance) Jay Griffiths, currently my favourite writer: a senses-filling journey that takes you up, down and around a jumble of words and ideas: often difficult, but always worth it.

You know the feeling you get when you put a finished book down, a book that’s completely captivated you? I reckon that’s pretty close to the feeling you get sitting on the grass at the foot of that last lung-bursting descent of Sca Fell, when you can look back and acknowledge that you loved every minute of it.

To get to the point, I wrote a book about off-road running called Run Wild – running on trails, fells, forests and mountains (and canal banks and parkland; I’ve lived in Leeds for 30 years). Soon after it was published, various festivals (including Ilkley Literature Festival) asked me to come and talk about it, I assumed to audiences mostly of runners, all of us in a room somewhere dancing about architecture. But books about running aren’t the same as books about climbing the Matterhorn or trekking solo to the South Pole. Those are adventure books, books to read in front of a fire, books that make you feel glad you’re not the one who’s actually doing the trekking, frostbite eating away at your toes and fish for tea again. No, the point about writing about running, or indeed talking at festivals about writing about running is that it’s all a clarion call, an encouragement to join in. Come on in, the water’s lovely! It’s like those pub conversations that runners have, egging each other on to enter a race or accept a mad challenge, hot air designed to get you out of the pub and into your running shoes.

So yes, writing and running. apples and crabs and the pursuit of meaning. But above all, and put as simply as possible, it’s just words that get you going. Words that accompany you out of the door and onto the canal bank, along the towpath to the woods, up through the old quarry, into the fields, back round the top of the valley, following the stream back down to the canal, and finally, home. Where, with a bit of luck, you can shower, put the kettle on and sit down with a good book.

Pop roots of A
writing career

Boff Whalley is a founder member of anarchist pop band Chumbawamba.

In recent years he has written musical and plays, including Sex & Docks & Rock’n’Roll and Big Society, both produced by Red Ladder Theatre Company.

His book Run Wild is a paean to running away from the city and reconnecting with the earth.

He is appearing at Ilkley Literature Festival on October 7, Craiglands Hotel, 2pm to 3pm, to talk about his book and at 4pm to 5pm he will lead a run across Ilkley Moor. Tickets and details on 01943 816714.

Run Wild, published by Simon and Schuster, is available now.