“I never started running to answer questions about the meaning of life. Yet while running, that drumming, body-roving on trails and tracks. through time and space …”

That’s how Chapter 8 of Mystical Miles starts.

That’s how the writing of the book started.

I wanted to make sense of what had happened after I started running to stop myself decaying into beer-drinking and pontificating about life, politics and more.

There was no doubt I had changed. I’d started with the idea of just running and the fantasy of running the ~89km Comrades Marathon, a kind of standard here in South Africa. I then ran 11 of those marathons, and later more plus a whole lot of runs unimaginable when I was starting out.

But writing  did more too. I had no idea when I started writing how the book would turn out; that thinking and writing about running would impact my running. It did that too.

As I understood more of what I liked about running, what it did for me, I could focus my running, go deeper and get still more out of running – without taking anything from anyone else.

And still I run and still I get more.