Running around in a small apartment like a caged rat for charity, joy and good health? Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, writes Sam Brooks.

This weekend I ran Round the Bays for the very first time. I finished my 8.4kms in 62 minutes and, as of writing, I am placed 50th in my age and gender group, 183rd place in my gender and 290th overall. This year the race is being held virtually, due to the omicron outbreak, and participants are able to run the 8.4kms anywhere in Auckland and log their run in an app.

I chose to run the 8.4km in my apartment, shuttling between my kitchen wall and my front door.

To clarify: No, I am not in self-isolation. No, this is not a method of running that has come out of lockdown desperation. Yes, I have ample access to nice outdoor places to run. Hell, I even have a gym membership I need to cancel. Nevertheless, for the past eight weeks I have run back and forth in my lounge, almost every day, for a total of between five and six kilometres a day.

I am deeply aware that this method of running is not for everybody. I would say that nine out of 10 people I’ve told have reacted on a spectrum between kind bewilderment and unmasked horror. None more so than one of my closest friends, who gets a notification on his watch every time I finish a run and therefore has to imagine me running the same 11 metres back and forth for the past 45 minutes. This method has been described by my nearest and dearest as the sort of thing that a lonely housewife, a caged rat or some other sort of deeply distressed person would do.

And yet, I really, really enjoy it.

The idea of running inside first came from my mother. Every morning, she would wake up at 5:30am and go for a run. When she got home from work, usually around 4.30pm, she’d do the same. Our house had significantly more room than my current apartment, so she would run from her bedroom, down the hallway, around the lounge and back. Her runs tended to last half an hour, which she would follow up with yoga. (I have yet to follow up my run with anything except a full can of V and a shower. We’re all on our own journeys.)

I never found this weird, although I was aware enough to realise it wasn’t something anybody else did. We lived right next to a running track. It would’ve taken her about two minutes to walk there. Yet she persisted in running around our house, and if we kids got in the way then it was our fault.

The benefits of running inside your house are extremely obvious to me. You’re in your own space. You’re not perceived by the prying eyes of the public, whether they’re the “living their lives outside” public or the “has a gym membership” public. You can light a scented candle. You can turn on a fan. It makes sense.

The one difference between the way that I run and the way my mother ran? I never fucking shut up about how I run.

The decision to do Round the Bays was prompted by an Instagram ad that said the run would be held virtually this year and people were encouraged to complete it in their backyards, around their suburb, or in another Covid-safe places. Running back and forth in your lounge was not mentioned.

When I pitched the idea of taking part, my friend – the one who gets a notification whenever I finish a run – replied with a sad face emoji. I sent the ad to a few colleagues with the purple imp emoji, illiciting various responses. I pitched the idea of writing about it to my editor, because if running for charity wasn’t enough to commit me (Rainbow Youth, y’all), then running for content was.

I should mention here that I’ve only been running for two months. Before this, I had never run recreationally. I am not what anybody would call a fit person. I start my day with a glass of blue V with ice, chased by a class of Coke with ice. I have a medium rare sirloin steak, no sides, for lunch probably twice a week. I forget to eat dinner regularly.

The decision to start running came when I wasn’t able to close my Apple rings consistently, and I found that a few minutes of jogging inside was enough to close that precious green exercise ring. Eventually, this turned into 15 minutes of jogging. Then it turned into 30 minutes of jogging. I found that I was running 4kms a day just to close a ring. So I decided to run 6kms a day for… my health, instead.

The idea of being motivated by three rings inside a little square screen is an inherently strange one. There is a social aspect to the challenge, although I have few friends on AppleFitness. But mostly the motivation is that I’ve definitely achieved something with that day. I moved, I stood, I did 30 minutes of exercise. I did that, and the little screen on my wrist that creates an embarrassing tanline did catherine wheel firework circles to reward me. Maybe the comparison to a caged rat is actually quite apt.

I’ll be honest, the decision to do Round the Bays was also a small act of petty defiance. It wasn’t that people’s response to the way I ran made me angry or upset – I truly care very little what other people think of me – but I enjoyed that it riled them. Why should it matter how I run? To me, the idea of travelling to a room filled with sweaty people, just to run there instead, is deeply strange. To run outside, where you could (quite literally) run into anybody? Equally so. That’s why I don’t do those things. I live my life, you live yours. 

The way I run does not affect anybody else’s life one bit, except when I consistently tell people that I’m running, when I’m running and how I’m running. I wanted them to know that not only could I run Round the Bays back and forth in my lounge, but I could enjoy it. If a deranged person enjoys the thing they are doing, are they deranged or genius? (Rhetorical question, I know what I am.)

And I did enjoy it! Once I figured out that the app wasn’t going to track the distance of my run, which is basically stationary, I uploaded my run to Strava through AppleHealth, which logged it in AppleFitness. I put on I Like to Watch, a Netflix-sponsored series where drag queens Trixie Mattel and Katya watch various Netflix products and react to them. I lit a peony, rose and cucumber candle from Meltdown Goods. I drank a low sugar blue Gatorade. And then I started running. It was 62 minutes of genuine pleasure. I don’t think I run fast enough to have experienced runner’s high, but I definitely got to runner’s medium.

I wish I could say that through running I feel closer to my mother, that I understand her better. And to an extent, I do. Doing a thing that is incredibly convenient for you, brings you pleasure, and is indisputably good for your physical and mental health on a daily basis is good. I hope running brought her a semblance of the calm, joy and rest that it brings me. It’s an added pleasure that I get to annoy people while I do it, and I imagine that me doing the thing she used to do, but upsetting people’s equilibrium just a little in the process of doing it, would bring her some joy too. 

But the main thing I understand? Running around inside rocks.