The man I met while out running thought I was wrong not to track my miles

I’m in the Shetland archipelago, Scotland’s northernmost islands. This morning I woke early, before six, and crept out of the bedroom and out of the house to run. It’s how I start most days, sneaking out, running kit left ready the night before, and though my husband says I’m not as good at the silent escape as I think I am, often everyone’s still asleep when I get back.

Today I left especially early because we were catching a plane later in the morning so if I was going to run – I am always going to run – it had to be at what my younger son calls no-thank-you-o-clock. When travelling, I always have an eye out for a good running route, and for today I’d spotted a long, sandy beach where the tide would be out and the sand firm enough for running at the hour I had in mind. At home I stick to pavements, partly to avoid unleashed dogs, but there are fewer people here and I was pretty confident I’d have the beach to myself.

It was as impressive as I’d imagined. Gusty wind coming straight down from the Arctic, showers and sunlight, pale sand, water bright blue in some lights and pewter in others, waves crashing and surging satisfactorily. There were chatty ravens at one end of the beach and watchful gannets nesting in the cliffs at the other. A seal kept bobbing to look at me, hunting its breakfast as I ran the mile out and back, out and back, noticing the patterns of my own footprints moving up the beach as the tide turned. I wasn’t quite solitary; there was a tent tucked in on the turf beside the gannets’ cliff, and after a while the occupant came out, went behind a rock, pottered about and began to pack up his camp. On my next lap he was pushing bags into bike panniers, and the next time there were bike tyre tracks across the sand and he was gone. I wondered what life course would bring a person to a solitary camping and bike tour of rain-swept, hilly North Atlantic islands, what he might be escaping, as if I didn’t have tendencies that way myself.

We met again when he stopped me to ask directions as I ran back to the B&B. You did well this morning, he said, how many miles was that? Dunno, I said, about an hour and a half, maybe around 10 miles but it’s slower on sand. Okay, he said, kilometres, how far did you run? I don’t know, I said, I don’t measure, not that many, I spent some time watching the seal. You mean you ran all that way and you weren’t even counting, he said, what about your watch? I showed him my watch, which has real hands that really go around and around, moved by tiny cogs, which I wear because I don’t always carry my phone and I worry about being late. He shook his head. All those miles, he said, and you weren’t even tracking. As if it was a waste, to run along a beach and nod to a seal and chat to some ravens and not count.

The man I met while out running thought I was wrong not to track my miles

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I don’t use social media and of course I sometimes wonder if the cost is worth the benefit

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You’re so brave, people say, to cycle in Dublin

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My teacher told my parents I was ‘retarded’. My grandmother taught me to read

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I know quantification and gamification please some folk, but they’re disastrous for me. I’m not competing, even or especially with myself. Weighing and calorie-counting make me obsessive and miserable. Counting time and distance when I run would quickly turn joy to punishment. I’ve been happiest when I’ve trusted my body to know hunger and satiety, to enjoy energy and strength and also honour tiredness, though in truth the last is a rare achievement; I was raised to pull myself together and carry on. Of course sometimes data is enlightening, obviously in science, business and government but also in private life. I decline to be weighed by doctors but I see that blood tests can be useful. Most of us would soon run into difficulty without keeping an eye on the bank balance and as I write I am aware of my word limit. But the compulsive, unnecessary counting of every element of life teaches us to distrust and disregard instinct, pleasure and presence in our bodies and in the world.