Why do we run? In his book on the subject, Mark Rowlands complains that most books about running reframe this question in terms of what use it has. We run because it keeps us healthy, reduces stress or brings us joy. We run for the satisfaction of a personal best or for the thrill of the race. We run to meet new people, to be part of a team or to impress the opposite sex. All of us will at some point have explained our pastime in such terms. But Rowlands argues that running, at its best, is valuable for what it is in itself, not for what it gives us. In other words, we run just because. And this is an idea that comes naturally to the novelist.



When the reform-school boy in Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner throws away a race against a rival school, he does so not only to deny glory to the institution he detests, but because to win – even to finish – would be to undermine what he’s come to learn is the true value of running. “You had to run, run, run, without knowing why you were running,” he says. “This feeling was the only honesty and realness there was in the world.” For once, he’s doing something that is not done for the sake of something or someone else.

The following five novels are recommended as portraits of a runner’s life, as well as for being forceful reminders that running, at its best, is something we do for its own sake.

Running by Jean Echenoz (translated. by Linda Coverdale)



Emil Zatopek on his way to triple glory

Jean Echenoz’s fictionalised biography of the “Czech Locomotive” Emil Zátopek tells of his transformation from an unenthusiastic, uncompetitive child into the “superhuman” athlete who won the 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon at the Helsinki Olympics of 1952. There is enough training-based detail here to please the club runner: Echenoz doesn’t ignore Zátopek the maverick, “ignoring every time-honoured rule” to pioneer the interval session or to “invent” the sprint finish. But this is a historically engaged novel about how sport can become entangled with politics; a story driven by the tension between individual freedom and political constraint. Echenoz does a brilliant job of picturing an athlete whose activities and public persona were constantly influenced by outside forces – from the unassuming child who is forced into cross country by Nazi occupiers in Zlín to the showboating “athlete of the state”. The most convincing of these is not the Bolt-like athlete who couldn’t lose – “living proof of the wonders of socialism” – but the man who, at the end of his career, is still running, even while confronting the prospect of irreversible decline.



Naomi Benaron reads from Running the Rift.

Set in Rwanda, Naomi Benaron’s Running the Rift is another novel whose narrative is propelled by a clash between athletics and politics. It follows Jean-Patrick, a promising young Tutsi runner who, growing up, seems destined for the Olympics. Amid the political instability of the early 1990s, Jean-Patrick’s talent and determination allow him to “barter a future with his legs and his sweat and his pain”. But, as it did for Zátopek, success threatens to come only at the cost of losing his identity. As the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis escalates, running is made difficult by the curfews, road blocks and patrols, and Jean-Patrick comes to appreciate the true importance of putting one foot in front of the other (“Only when he ran ... could he sort out these problems that went round and round in his head”). Running is no longer a way of life, but a luxury. Soon after, it becomes a necessity: when the genocide strikes, Jean-Patrick finds himself, quite literally, bartering a future with his legs, his sweat and his pain.

Guterson’s novel begins with a brilliantly perceptive account of a half-mile race: “approximately two minutes of self-mortification and private crucifixion”. Few who’ve had the misfortune of running an 800m race would disagree with this. Nor are they likely to question the narrator’s description of the 800m runner: “They want to do battle with suffering. It’s the trauma they want, the anguished ordeal.” It is fitting that a novel about masochism taken to an extreme should begin with an 800m race. In The Other, running – and the pain that accompanies it – is an important means of escape: from child abuse, from romantic rejection, from the pressure to fit in, but above all from the “hamburger world” of late capitalism. Guterson’s novel shows how our need for ritual suffering must be contained. The alternative, played out in the narrative of The Other, is a literal escape from civilisation – an austere life in the woods even less appealing than an 800m race.

Does it matter? This is a question that haunts Jon Mosher, the high-school athlete at the centre of Mark Slouka’s coming-of-age novel set in the US in the late 1960s. With everything going on – alongside the personal crises that drive the book’s narrative, the Vietnam draft is a constant and frightening presence – Jon can be forgiven for questioning the importance of running. However, intoxicated by numbers, split times and the thrill of the race, he remains willing to put himself through any kind of torture to remain in the team. Slouka’s descriptions of high-school track races are unrivalled in their resonance and beauty; these passages capture everything from “the air thick with heat rub” to the deadly elegance of the elite runner, progressing through the field “like a scythe going through grass – gorgeous, ruthless”. Slouka does a brilliant job of making the reader understand Jon’s decision to stick at it. In Brewster, running is not so much about catharsis and escape, but about creating valuable shared experiences and memories. “For those three minutes and 20 seconds,” Jon says after victory in the mile relay, “it felt like it mattered.”

In 1978, having failed to find a publisher for Once a Runner, John L Parker Jr began selling the book at road races from the boot of his car. It quickly became a favourite among those club runners lucky enough to get their hands on a copy. Now widely available, Once a Runner should be prescribed to any runner who trains hard – or who thinks they do. Quenton Cassidy is a damagingly committed miler whose success comes at the cost of permanent fatigue, crumbling relationships and a lifestyle similar to that of a cloistered monk. In the book’s most memorable passage, he completes a brutal session of 60 x 400m reps. Parker Jr’s prose is convincing enough to leave the reader feeling inadequate yet strangely motivated. But Once a Runner gives fair warning to anyone looking to dive into a training routine like Cassidy’s. At a party towards the end of the novel, he has a moment of self-revelation that will resonate with anyone who has trained for an endurance event: “It occurred to him that he was a pretty dull guy.” So, why do it? Cassidy admits he has no adequate response to this, but there’s something in the breathless energy and enthusiasm of Once a Runner that points to the answer: we do it just because.