Often, when I’m running on my own, I can tell I’m ill before I’m ill. My body reacts differently, easy sections become much harder, I’m sweating pulling my shorts on, before I even start running. Running alone can a great early detection system as you spot your running with an illness before…

… you run with an illness. 

Some runners live for the machismo of running in any conditions. Wind, rain, hurricane, plague of locusts, it doesn’t matter what is happening in the world they will keep running. Even injury and illness don’t stop them. One leg broken? Just hop? Two legs broken? Switch to a marathon in a wheelchair. Clinically dead? Not an excuse, where’s the spark pads?

I’ve also operated under the maxim “above the neck, fine, below the neck, rest.” I do not know where I got this from or whether it has any connection to any known medical science. Given it dismisses all mental illness, I suspect it’s from TwinBikeWife’s mum’s little book of medical sayings. My mother-in-law used to be a nurse, in the same way that quackery used to be a legitimate medical science. She was a nurse in the 1960s. She quit to raise a family and has been using the same medical knowledge as The Beatles ever since. The Beatles, whose song ‘Doctor Robert’ recommended their friendly GP, Dr Bob, whose prescription for a grazed knee was LSD and whose prescription for a headache was, you guessed it, LSD.

TwinBikeMotherInLaw last saw the inside of a hospital before decimalisation was invented. I suspect I may have got this advice from her. Don’t listen to it. Don’t run when ill, below or above the neck, but do use your solo runs to check your own body. You’ll be surprised how a run can warn you that blue light is about to flash.

In 2024, I had two goals, complete a triathlon in June after running an ultramarathon in April. 

I thought my training had been going well for the ultra, but then I injured my foot before getting a chest infection just as I was getting ready to start running again. Between illness and injury, I cancelled the ultra and I managed to run only six times between Easter and taking part in the triathlon in June. 

I wasn’t disappointed, just realistic. Injury and illness are part of running, and they have a way of forcing you back to the simplest version of it: just getting out the door, on your own, with no plan beyond moving forward. In those six runs between Easter and June, every single one was alone. And I’d argue that every single one was better for it.

Running alone is a great way to stay healthy. Not just for the benefits of exercise and a healthy life but also because you rarely encounter anyone who is ill when you are running. It’s not like you take a route through the tropical disease ward at your local isolation unit. Or even run within coughing distance of someone with the flu. When you run on your own, you isolate yourself from other people. 

If I’m running down the street and see someone ahead of me, I make sure to give them plenty of space as I pass. Like a super-tanker approaching the Panama Canal, I assume the more distance between us, the better. No one wants to hear the swish of Lycra shorts right behind them, feel a runner’s breeze brushing past their arm, or catch the warmth of someone’s breath as they sidestep around them at the last second. That’s not running; that’s practice mugging.

I will occasionally cross the road. I am conscious, as a man, that my perception of what is safe and a woman’s perception of what is safe are very different. For example, my perception of a well-lit street in December at night, occupied by several parked cars, a white van, and a woman walking alone is that this street presents no danger to me whatsoever. The woman, on the other hand, may have her keys in her hand, ready to strike like the point of a knife, and is eyeing up me, the stranger panting and running and dressed entirely in black, and my grab-van and thinking that this is how Silence of the Lambs starts. If I ask her to move a sofa, I’m getting maced. 

In that circumstance, night, me being the only other person on the street, I cross the road to be polite and non-threatening. I even sheath my knife, pull up my balaclava and shout “I’m not going to hurt you” to make it as safe and comfortable for her as possible. I’m not looking for you to call me a knight of the night, or man of the year, but if those are the words you want to use then don’t let me stop you. 

My regular solo run takes me four miles through the southside of Glasgow, past the same houses, the same corner shop, the same park. I know every pavement crack. I know where the footpath narrows near the school and where the dog is always behind the gate. I don’t think about any of it. That’s the point. The run thinks for me, and by the time I’m back at my front door, whatever was tangled in my head is either resolved or forgotten. I’m not sure which is more useful.

Running alone should be safe. Both for you and for others. You don’t meet, speak or interact with anyone except the occasional 40mph Deliveroo rider on a moped modded with a NASA rocket who gets a well deserved: “Oi, you should be on the road”. Other than that, you’re on your own. It is liberating, it’s just you and the world. For me, running on my own with no phone, gives me a chance to think about problems at works and to try and solve them, or to plan ahead and bounce ideas around my noggin, or just to tune our completely so that by the time I get home I’m not thinking of anything at all. My solo run is just me. Your solo run is just you. And on the right evening, on the right street, with the right amount of quiet, that is enough.