‘I’ve turned into the midlife running man – and no one is more surprised than me’

At the end of the summer this year, I started street running. I hadn’t done it regularly for years, but after a course of Ozempic weight loss jabs, I’d shed enough pounds (nearly two stone) to run again without damaging my knees. What I didn’t expect was how brilliant a season autumn is to run in the local parks. And as we slipped into deep winter, you can still find me running around the ponds in my local most days.

I particularly like being by the water. Someone told me that just 20 minutes spent by open water is good for your mind, and I find it calming. It makes me think about my mum when I run past it. The last thing she ever said to me was “Go for a walk by the river”, as if it was a solution to something I’d just said, only I hadn’t. Maybe it was a solution to what was coming. The next day she took her own life.

Although this happened when I was 26 – over 30 years ago – the memory of those final words is still fresh. I’d be devastated if I ever forgot what they sounded like, and while I now think about our last conversation with a deeper acceptance, rather than raw pain, I feel it’s important for me to keep going, to stay alive.

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Some people look for positivity to push them forward, but sometimes I find negativity more inspiring; a problem with someone whose actions I have no control over, a snide comment in a football WhatsApp group – I enjoy turning other people’s stuff into running fuel. Grudge running aside, the beauty of being in the open is that I am now exposed to the changing seasons in a way I wasn’t before. And maybe it’s because numerically I am somewhere past the summer of my own life, that I now warm to this time of the year.

The song “Hanging Around” by The Stranglers comes to mind, again and again. There’s a resilience to it that illuminates what I’m doing when I’m running. Not that I am actually listening to it – I’m still waiting for my NHS Bluetooth hearing aids – but I know what music will drive me along. I also like the space in my head and cling to whatever flits through my mind to distract me from putting one foot in front of the other, and helps me concentrate on my breathing.

I also think about how lucky I am to run; some people can’t get beyond their immediate four walls for fresh air. I see the big jets stacked in the sky and think about how, when I’m at the end of a transatlantic flight, I’d kill to be bouncing about down below. Being appreciative of these feelings of freedom helps me overcome any physical pain or occasional stabs of boredom.

In his book In Praise of Walking, Shane O’Mara says “We can reach a more creative state by being in motion”, and though my pace can barely be described as motion, I find this is true. In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami says it helps him to learn speeches. I find it helps me refine my thoughts and the pieces of writing I’ve yet to finish. Unnecessary waffling drops away and I’m left with the key message I’m trying to get across. A sentence that will start an article or lead me off towards the end of it.

I used to see other people go as slow as I do and I’d wonder “Why do they bother?” Hello, karma. At best my pace is a calculated post-football training warm-down; at worst, it’s a minor stumble faster than walking. If I could run quicker, I imagine I might not experience and witness as many things as I do. I see so much when I’m moving through the park. A flock of pigeons won’t move for runners, but if a dog charges towards them they erupt into a burst of blue.

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Just like the park scene in 101 Dalmatians, there are so many matching sets of dogs and their owners. This morning a stern-faced man being led along a straight line leash by a determined hound looked like a series of towering protractors. Everywhere I go, curly cross-a-poos are bouncing around with their owners smiling down fondly. I spy a solitary rare velvet Weimaraner turn and watch as two pug dogs in coats start a fight with a chow and some breed of a tamed fluffy wolf.

The different seasons are marked by a fashion change too; moon boots replace V trainers, and woolly hats are compulsory, but coats are held across arms if the sun comes out. I notice how the men often wear their unused dog leads around their necks, both ends clipped together at the chest like some sort of chain. Ladies in Crocs, long open coats and scarves walk around with their home mugs of coffee, stepping across wet leaves that flip like freshly caught fish across the pavements. There are backpacks and baby buggies and bikes and jogging bottoms and puffa jackets galore.

Puddles in the shapes of countries perfectly reflect glimmering trees, and toddlers in trainers ignore long slow “Nooos” from mums and dads as they rush into the pools. I imagine runners with headphones listening to podcasts of actors and comedians and politics and history or audiobooks. They don’t hear the metal sign outside the cafe that clatters over in a gust. Nor the sound of wet tires rolling slowly down the 20mph roads that corner two sides of the park.

Then there are the sprightly runners with more energy and lift than me. I find them really inspiring. Most of them are significantly younger than me and they make me wonder whether I’ll ever be able to pick myself up to achieve some sort of improved pace. A woman ploughs steadily by and in my mind, I tick off “good runner” as she has one of many jogging styles I note and admire every day. The athletes, the impatient, the ungainly, those that bounce past on the balls of their feet in invisible stilettos; the steady, the well-kitted out and those that are dressed from the PE department lost property box.

There’s the man with really wide swinging arms and the grey bloke with skeletal features and tatty running gear who should really add some colour to his get-up. And another who sprints leaning to his left, arms rushing like he’s slipping to keep his balance. There are all types of runners in this north London park, but not too many idle plodders like me. I’m really hoping I meet someone who goes the same pace so we can talk and run and forget the legs.

There was a dad and his toddler by the pond last week, and as she was running away from him, I remarked “She’s going faster than me.” When I came back past him, he asked “Are you James Brown?” I nodded, and he said: “I recognised you from your voice rather than your looks. I used to live in India and your talkSport radio show with Johnny Vaughan was my only real connection with back home. I’d look forward to it all week. I loved it.”

It was such a nice thing to say and made me really happy that me and others talking surreal rubbish and interviewing old footballers for their wildest stories had given someone on the other side of the world a connection to home. I liked seeing him and his little girl while I was slipping past the fountain in the pond thinking about my mum. Then I caught a flash of sunlight on the fake brass plates on the commemorative benches of the dead. And I told myself to keep going; keep going into this new year one run at a time. Stay alive.