Running while dad
On fathers, sons, and doing what it takes to keep showing up
I grew up with two dads. There was my biological dad, the one I’ve written about previously: the dad who ran the London Marathon, and who died in 2023.
And there’s the dad I’ve lived with since I was 3, who I started calling Dad soon after, and who has been married to my mum for nearly 40 years.
I don’t call him my stepdad. He’s Dad. They both are. This has never been confusing to me, since I know who I’m talking about. But my brother and I developed a shorthand to help people differentiate the two, using their initials:
Pop K, my biological dad, and Pop G, the dad I chose.
After I finished the London Marathon, Pop G told me that the only organised race he’s ever done was the one we did together: The Huddersfield Examiner Fun Run, a 5-mile race through various suburbs of my home town of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. This would have been the summer of 1994, the summer before I started high school.
I ran this race twice. The first, in 1993, I did alone. I was 10-years-old. This is what I was like then: outgoing, unencumbered. Fearless. I signed up after seeing an ad in the local paper, the Huddersfield Examiner, who were sponsoring the race. “A fun run,” I thought. “I like to run. I like fun. Sounds like my cup of tea.”
I also don’t remember much about the race. This was more than 30 years ago. But I remember enjoying it a great deal.
Unlike the cross country races I’d done at school, this race didn’t come with the same unpleasant feelings of nerves and what I’d later understand was anxiety – a feeling of worry and panic brought on by the competition of it, by watching the faster boys sprint away and disappear into the tree line, by the knowledge that I was bad at it.
At the fun run, most of the participants were adults. I wasn’t racing them. I couldn’t. I was 10 years old. The pressure was off. I was doing it just for me. It was thrilling.
When I was keen to run again the next year, Pop G signed up too.
We ran shoulder to shoulder, and in the home stretch dad took my hand and held it tight, raising it high in victory as we crossed the finish line together, the MC from the local radio station calling out our names as the crowd cheered for father and son.
Running was something Pop G had always done, since I’d known him at least. After a stressful day of teaching, he’d put on his Reeboks and go for a run. It was a coping strategy he’d discovered as his first marriage was ending, a way of channeling the stress and pain of the break-up into something positive. Then it was a habit.
If he was in the mood for company, I’d go with him, running laps of the local cricket pitch. When I was very little, this was a long way, and I’d stop for a rest every other lap. As I got older, I could just about keep up, and we’d go further afield.
When we couldn’t run together, he’d tell me the route and I’d go alone. There wasn’t any kind of training regimen. There wasn’t a plan. We both ran when we felt like it. We ran until we’d finished the route, until we got home and stopped the watch.
Later, when I found myself in my own dark places, he’d suggest running as a remedy. “It always helps,” he’d say. I didn’t always believe him. When you’re depressed, putting on running shoes is a difficult task, let alone leaving the house and going for a run. This is the closest we got to talking about mental health when I was younger.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being that outgoing boy, unencumbered by anxiety and self-doubt. And over the years since, I’ve found myself a long way from running.
If I’d kept it up, other than the odd run to the gym and back, the occasional treadmill warm-up, the staccato efforts to “get back into it,” maybe I’d have avoided some of the more difficult periods of my twenties and thirties.
But then again, if I’d kept it up, maybe I wouldn’t be here now, with this perspective. It’s never good to suffer. But sometimes it’s good to struggle. It lets you know what you’re fighting for.
I started running again when my son was a few months old. Trying to find a way to stay present, to stay balanced, to keep showing up as my best self. With limited time and energy, a run is a quick way to get some fresh air, some good chemicals.
Like Pop G promised, it always helps.
And because I understand that physical exercise is only part of that equation, I also see a therapist.
I run 5-6 times a week now. It’s rarely about races and seldom about personal bests. It’s about routine, and perseverance, and getting it done. Running is the work. Or part of it. It keeps me connected to myself.
That I’m able to run this often is entirely owed to the patience and goodwill of my wife, who suffers through my shoe obsessions, frequent physical ailments and extended weekend runs so that she doesn’t have to suffer through me not running.
(Thank you.)
Go really fast, Daddy.
I found that boy again, too; that outgoing, unencumbered, fearless boy.
He’s alive and well in my son.
He loves to be around people and gets a real kick from a crowd. He wants to be amongst it. No matter what it is. He’s incredibly brave; a thrill-seeking daredevil who loves to do big jumps from steps and walls. At soft play, he gathers all the squishy blocks into a pile and hurls himself into them off the top of a nearby set of steps.
Most of all he loves to run fast. He starts in a little crouch like his hero, Sonic the Hedgehog, then bursts forward with effortless technique; a high-cadence patter off the forefoot, slight forward lean, arms pumping, a huge grin fixed on his face.
Until a few months ago he was content to run by himself. Then his first scraped knee dented his confidence a little. To help get his running mojo back, I started taking his hand and running with him, side-by-side, there to catch him if he tripped.
It’s one of my favourite things we do together. “Go really fast, Daddy,” he’ll say. And off we go. We aren’t racing. We’re doing it just for us. There is no finish line.
He doesn’t always need me to run now. But when he wants to, I take his hand and we run together, his feet skimming the surface of the pavement or the grass as he’s pulled along, giggling at the sheer speed of it all. He’s not so much running as gliding.
I love that he loves running. That he knows that I love running, too. I love that after many years of struggle, and many more of doing the hard work of self-care and reflection, my physical and mental health are in a place where I’m able to show up for him, every day, no matter what he needs. A place where, at 42, I can keep stride with his boundless energy for long enough to hear that intoxicating belly laugh.
And I love being side-by-side, at least for now.
Time goes really fast, too. It won’t be long before he’ll be the faster one, pulling me along. But that’s the point, isn’t it. That’s what Dad knew when I was a boy. That’s what my son will know one day. That’s what this is all about.
I run, so he might fly.
Loved reading this Dan, just beautiful.