Running slower is one of the hardest things you will do. I’ve tried to run slower and I can’t – it feels like you’re fighting a current that’s always pushing you to go faster. It’s easier to run fast because sport is all about speed, endurance and extending the limits of human possibility.  It is a positive action. Onwards and upwards.

In triathlons, the longest events – long swim, over 100 miles on a bike and then a marathon to finish – are known as Ironman events. 

Ironman refers to the iron will shown by competitors to compete in the challenging conditions of its first course in Kona in Hawaii. It wasn’t the fastest who would win, or the most physically capable, it was the one with the iron willpower to compete through draining heat and strength sapping head winds over 12 hours of racing.

The name fitted the course – if not female competitors – and, as such, it stuck.

But it strikes me that many races have followed this template without thinking what it means for the rest of us.

While many races are named after their location: the London Marathon, The Great North Run, ParkRun. Often a race will describe the hardest aspects of the course. Slateman refers to the slate covered hills of Snowdonia. Brutalfest has a series of races that are, well, brutal.

It’s human nature, it seems, to concentrate on the worst that could happen. And to overcome it. Race organisers are no different, but wouldn’t it be nice to be offered Flatfest, The Downhill Marathon or Pretty Flowers 10K?

Despite organisers’ attempts to make me go faster and further, I have tried to run slow.  At the Dublin Marathon in 2008 I started with a knee injury. It hadn’t healed as I had hoped and it was still giving me problems in my last run before the race. “I’ll just start slow,” I thought, “and see what happens.”

But then I’m surrounded by thousands of runners, all eager and ready to start. And while I feel I’m running slower, I’ve run the first mile 30 seconds faster as I’ve been swept up in the wave and been unable to judge my pace due to those faster runners around me. I thought I was slowing, I wanted to be  Sunday driving but I was going F2 speeds in an F1 race. Running slow with other people is hard, unless those other people are running the pace you want to run. 

Running slow when alone is tough. It can feel too easy. It doesn’t feel like training, so you start to speed up.  You look at your watch and you remember that you swore not to wear one and you curse the author who suggested you didn’t need to look at your pace. 

I get it now. Sometimes you need to use technology to help – and running faster or running slower is one of those times. But I struggle with a watch telling me what to do because watches can’t speak. They beep. And beeps trigger my PETSD: Physical Education Traumatic Stress Disorder. Which is like PTSD but with plimsolls. 

One beep and I’m back in a gym hall at the Stornoway Primary. There are foot high wooden benches along the walls. Climbing bars. A mounting horse. Scuff marks on the battered, shiny parquet floor. And a fire exit. Cause all gyms had a fire exit which was used for fire drills and, more importantly ventilation as the gym would heat up faster than a Pop-tart and convert from gym to sauna by the time I run my first lap of the dreaded ‘Bleep Test’.

The Beep Test was a simple idea made flesh and that flesh was then tortured repeatedly by our P.E. teacher. He stood at the side of the gym with a portable stereo. He would load it with a cassette tape and, before he pressed play, he would say:

“Line up on the back wall. When you hear the beep, run to the opposite wall. If you don’t touch the wall before you hear the next beep. You’re out. If you do touch the wall, wait, and then run back when you hear the beep. Continue until there is no one left.”

This last man standing physical elimination was also the premise of Stephen King’s horror novel  and film ‘The Long Walk’. Primary school teaching should not share any similarity with any of Stephen King’s ideas. What next? Winter ski trips to the Overlook hotel?

I lined up with the rest of the boys in my class. This was the eighties, so the teachers had already eliminated the girls for being too slow because, well, girls can’t run. A digression: one of those girls eventually became a world record holder as the fastest woman to cycle from John O’Groats to Lands End. Back to the gym: BEEP!

The first lap was easy. The second too. The BEEPs were well spaced but by the third and fourth a few of the ‘heavier’ boys were eliminated. BEEP five and six became serious. There was only a second or two to rest before we had to run again. We were getting faster and closer to sprinting to make it. Our teacher watched emotionless, like Robert Patrick as the T1000 in Terminator 2. The teacher wasn’t in charge. It was only the machine. The unrelenting never-ending machine. BEEP. Faster. BEEP. Faster. BEEP. Faster. 

Five of us left. I’m struggling. I barely made the last touch. My stomach is cramped and the only boys left with me are the swots who go to the local running club. They wear singlets. I can’t beat them. And the next BEEP isn’t a BEEP it’s DOOM. Stop. DOOM. Take the walk of shame and join your fellow losers in the corner of the gym furthest from the fire exits so you can drown not just in your sweat but in your shame. 

The Bleep Test was designed to break the self-esteem of a generation of schoolchildren. It was a perpetual motion elimination machine designed to do one thing and one thing only: tell you that no matter how fast you ran you would never ever be good enough for it. 

That’s why I struggle with both running fast and running slow. I like to run at my own pace. And that pace is not your pace, just as your pace is not mine. The Bleep Test told us we’d never be fast enough. The Ultra Iron Mega Badass Brutal Hardcore Three Legged Race tells us we’re not tough enough. Ignore both. Run your own pace. Slow down if you want to. Stop if you want to. Don’t listen to the beeps.  

This might seem counter-intuitive. Why would you want to run in the wrong shoes? No one wants to race a half marathon in a pair of green wellies. You’ll never get a personal best in Gucci kitten heels.  This may seem obvious. You don’t need extremes to prove it. Yet, extreme footwear is what we hear when people start talking about running because running shoes are seen not just as something to keep your feet warm and comfy, they can also help you win. 

Take Sebastian Sawe, who broke the official marathon world record by running it under two hours in 2026 at the London Marathon. Or Yomif Kejelcha – who finished second and also ran under two hours – and Tigst Assefa, winner of the women’s race. They all wore the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, a so-called ‘supershoe’.

The first runners ran barefoot. The legendary Pheidippides, the Greek herald who ran 25 miles from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC to announce victory over the Persians, was said to have run barefoot. Admittedly, after announcing the victory he keeled over and died. But that does appear to be unrelated to his footwear and more to do with a lack of water and energy gel station along the way. It was the first marathon, event logistics was still to be invented.

As our knowledge and appreciation of footwear increased, we understood that running barefoot is not as simple as it first seems. Just try running on a beach. I have and I can tell you that the feel of sand between your toes soon wears off when you realise it’s not sand between your toes but sandpapers and you’re in some sort of torture experiment from the killer Jigsaw in the Saw franchise of movies. 

“You will be crushed to death in 10 minutes. You can escape if you run away, but every step will slice a section of your foot off like pastrami in an American diner! Do you run or do you stay? Ha! Ha! Ha!”

I want you to consider running in the ‘Wrong Shoes’. While Nike and Adidas or New Balance and Mizuno may tell you that you need to run in only the fastest and lightest and most expensive shoes that they can persuade you to hand over your cash for. You don’t need those shoes and running in the ‘Wrong Shoes’ teaches you that. 

I have run in the ‘Wrong Shoes’ several times. Often because I’ve forgotten to bring the ‘Right Shoes’ with me. One time, I was visiting my mum and dad in the Western Isles of Scotland. I’d arrived on Friday night and had to leave early on Monday morning. I had two days and one of those days was the Lewis Sabbath. Most people call it Sunday. But, in the Western Isles, Sunday doesn’t exist. Only the Sabbath exists, and it starts at 11pm on Saturday when the pubs close and ends at 8am on Monday morning when the local Free Church Minister wakes up. It was not a day; it was a complete cultural tradition and shutdown. Everything shuts. No shops open. No bars serve a pint. The swings in playparks are tied together. Even hotels are careful to serve residents deep in underground bunkers away from the prying eyes of extremist locals in case the Lord finds out that someone has blasphemed the Sabbath with a rotisserie toaster. 

I planned to run on the Sabbath, and I’d left my trainers behind on the mainland and I only discovered this on Saturday night, after all shops had closed. I had two choices: I could either not run (and not offend the lord with my knees on the Sabbath) or I could run and wear my walking boots instead. I chose the boots.   

While it was not the fastest of runs, a pair of wellies would have been better as the boots weighed as heavy as our neighbour’s judgment upon me for venturing outside in shorts and a t-shirt on the Sabbath. It was still a run. I did it. I didn’t need cushioning or a carbon plate springboarding my feet into the record books. I just needed to run. In shoes. And ‘Wrong Shoes’ were the ‘Right Shoes’ because they helped me get out and run, regardless of their suitability.

I have worn the ‘Wrong Shoes’ many times since. Slipping on what shoes I have to hand (or foot) rather than choosing not to run because the conditions weren’t perfect. Also, because I’m forgetful and often leave my shoes behind. I should have learned this lesson by now. 

Try running in the wrong shoes. Not because it’s fun or that it’s going to help you break any world or personal records. Do it because it shows you that you can run anytime, anywhere, in anything – without waiting for your feet to be cushioned by angels. Except barefoot on a beach. I mean it. That’s just crazy. You’d be better with cheese graters on your feet.  

My watch can connect me to not just one, or two, but three global satellite networks. It can pinpoint my location down the exact spot I am standing on the earth right now – and all I can think is:  “Did the United States and Russia spend trillions of dollars/rubles in the mid-century Space Race to throw all these satellites into geosynchronous orbit so that Fiona from HR knows if she’s running 10 minutes 38 seconds per mile or 10 minutes 37 seconds per mile in her local  Parkrun?”

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and proclaimed: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind“. NASA didn’t ask him to check his watch to see if he’d run 0.01km or 0.02km. They just celebrated one foot placed in front of another. In the decades since we boldy went where no one has gone before we seem to have forgotten that running started with one simple purpose: to escape dinosaurs. 

In 2023 scientists revealed that one of our very earliest ancestors may have lived at the same time as dinosaurs ruled the earth. And while these early ancestors may have as much resemblance to modern man as Blackpool does to Monaco they must have shared the same thought as us when seeing a t-rex in Jurassic Park: run.

Because, if they hadn’t run, they wouldn’t have been our ancestors, and we’d be extinct after great-great-great-great-great-many-times-over-grandpa Todd became a dino snack.

Today, our watches can tell us our speed, location, our heart-rate, our pace. They can provide directions and maps, let us listen to music and even make an emergency call if we suddenly stop. 

But do you need to wear it? Is your life improved by having a graph of your perceived exertion level while jogging round a park? Next time you run, don’t record your run. Or, if you feel you do need to record, add the details manually afterwards. 

Or, if you currently don’t wear a watch, then wear a watch. See if knowing your max heart rate is a sign of fitness or a critical early warning sign of catastrophic cardiac failure. Heart rate of 230 beats per minute after standing up? Maybe, just maybe, wearing a watch will save your life? In which case, I take everything I just said about how pointless they are back. Watches are great. Get your blood pressure checked.

I have enjoyed several of Alastair Humphrey’s books and was looking forward to this one. The description captured my attention:

“After travelling the whole world, can exploring a single map ever be enough?
Adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year investigating the small map around his own home.

“Can this unassuming landscape, marked by the glow of city lights and the hum of busy roads, satisfy his wanderlust? Could a single map provide a lifetime of exploration?”

And the first few chapters live up to his goal as he start to explore a map a single place at a time. Until, after a few chapters I realised, he was never going to tell us where he was.

I can see why. He doesn’t want people to know where he lives.

Or maybe he’s trying to make the places universal by talking about them generally rather than with any specifics.

But the effect on me was feel the whole book as being vague and lacking any sense of place.

I think there is a great book to be written about one place – there are countless books that tell the story of a city or a home or a place – and there was an opportunity to do the same here in a random spot just outside his door. But without knowing where his door was, except somewhere near London, somewhere near the Thames, it quickly lost my attention.

A disappointment.

You can buy it here: AlastairHumphreys