"ALL WHO have put on a pair of trainers will know the sense of freedom that comes with fresh air on the face miles from home," writes Robin Harvie in the prologue to his excellent book, Why We Run.
Harvie admits to having never won a race in his life, though he has a capacity for tackling very long distances, a passion (the book is sub-titled A Story of Obsession) which non-runners find difficult to comprehend.
Though Harvie addresses the notion that the process of starting to run can, for some people, be enormously difficult, once they've been active for a month or so, few want to stop. In other words, irrespective of how fast you go, running can become compulsive and Harvie joins a lengthening list of accomplished writers who have found that the solitude of running enables them to travel on a simultaneous inner journey of discovery.
In appropriately laddish manner, Harvie ran his first marathon for a bet, found that he enjoyed it and was soon running 120 miles a week. On average, this took around 15 hours - ample time for the author to think about life and how to escape its depressingly routine nature.
Though a very personal tale of discovery, Harvie's account is laced with often excruciating descriptions of pain, philosophical musings and history. It develops to become part-memoir, part compulsive page-turner.
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