Running to the moon

“I’m running to the moon,” Alex Hoffman would say whenever someone asked him where he was going in his running shorts and trainers. Anyone that didn’t know him would assume he was joking, but he was deadly serious.

Alex had started running he was 12. At the time, for the first year or so, he was just running, no destination in mind, but he’d recorded his distances in his running diary. But when he was 13 he’d read a magazine article speculating whether anyone could ever run the distance from the Earth to the moon, 238,885 miles. He did a quick calculation, if he ran ten miles per day for the rest of his life he’d achieve the target in just over 65 years.

Easy!

It became his life’s goal. His life became focussed on running to the exclusion of everything else. He obsessed on training shoes, surfaces, pre and post run stretching techniques, the best plasters for blisters, he no longer ate for pleasure, his diet revolved around energy release rates, carbon burn ratios and release efficiency.

He had been running with a friend from school, but with the increase in distance to ten miles he soon became used to running alone. He got up early in order to complete a run before school. On some days he’d do another run after he got home. There was no longer any time for play, he had a moon to get to.

He was human, of course, so he did miss days when he was sick. A couple of times he did serious injuries to his leg and was out of action for weeks, but he more than made up for it when he got back on his feet. He ran every marathon he could get to and ultra-marathons, fifty miles plus. He didn’t waste his time with triathlons, he refused to get on a bike, let alone swim, running was quicker, well maybe not quicker, but cycling wouldn’t get him any closer to the moon.

He ran to and from school, then to and from college, then to and from work. He ran before work, he ran at lunchtime, he ran after work. He ran when he was on holiday. When he was asleep he dreamt about running, though, of course, he didn’t get very far.

He hit his target nearly a decade early, at just 68 years and 297 days of age. He was 24 miles into a marathon in an obscure Derbyshire village. He was halfway up a hill when his distance-tracker sent off the alarm – he’d hit his target.

He stopped, shouted “I’m on the moon,” to the confusion of the runners around him, then ran on, to the top of the hill, where he stopped to eat a banana, take on some water, and reflect on his achievement.

He had done it, nearly ten years earlier than his original plan, he had run all the way to the moon, 238,885 miles in just over fifty years. 

Not that it had been easy. He’d run every day, in all weathers, ice, snow, excessive heat, whatever the situation. It had cost him jobs, promotions, bonus pay – running for two hours every day meant he’d not been able to give everything to his work the way his colleagues had, and he’d watched them pass him on life’s career ladder, just as he’d passed many a million struggling jogger over the course of his life.

Relationships too, he’d watched them go whooshing by. Too many times he’d been late for a date because he was running, there were too many arguments caused by the £200  he’d spend on new running shoes or the latest running gadget, or his missing out on quality time at home because he was training for a fifty (and the only way to train for a fifty is to run a fifty). Too many holidays where there was never any time to explore the sights or enjoy the sun, because there was always a marathon to run. 

He’d never had children. His ex-wife blamed his low sperm count on running, the pressure he submitted his testacles to every day, two hours crammed into tight, hot shorts. Maybe she was right, maybe not, but he’d certainly missed out on lots of sex because, he was frequently too tired, or simply didn’t have the time, because he had a twenty to fit in. He’d always put running before sex, before everything in fact.

But he’d got there, all the way to the moon, and whatever his regrets, well in truth he didn’t really regret anything. After all, running was his life, it was what made him, what made him get out of bed in the morning, if he’d never run would his life have been any better? How many non-runners have perfect marriages, fulfilling careers, happy lives? Not many. Maybe none. Happiness was something you felt when your feet was stomping across the grass, along the river, when you were overtaking the man in the banana suit, when you were stretching your legs out into a sprint finish.

The big question though, the all-important question, much more important than whether or not he’d wasted his life, the real question was could he make it back?

68 years old, he did the calculation in his head, if he lived to say 100 years, that would work out at 20 miles a day. Difficult, but achievable. He had to try, anyway. After all, what sort of idiot would run all the way to the moon and not run back again.