The alarm goes off at five-thirty. For the first minute, every part of me argues for staying in bed. By the end of the first kilometre, I have forgotten why.
I did not start running to become a runner. I started because I wanted one hour of the day that belonged only to me, and walking felt too easy and the gym felt too serious. Running sat somewhere in between. It still does.
The first mile is a liar
Every runner learns this sooner or later: the first mile tells you that you cannot do it. Your legs are heavy, your breath is all wrong, and the voice in your head is very persuasive about turning back.
Then, somewhere around the second mile, the voice goes quiet. The body warms up. The rhythm arrives. And you realise that the first mile was not the truth, it was just the beginning.
I have found the same is true of most things worth doing. The first page of writing. The first week of a new habit. The first difficult conversation. They all lie to you a little. The trick is to keep going long enough to hear what comes after.
Slow is a speed
For a long time I was embarrassed by how slow I was. Young people would overtake me on the road without any visible effort. I would arrive home red-faced and out of breath, having covered a distance they would call a warm-up.
But one morning, an older gentleman who walks the same route every day called out to me, "Keep going, beta, slow is also a speed." I have thought about that sentence more than almost anything I was taught in school.
Slow is also a speed. It still gets you there.
What the morning gives back
The best part of running early is not the running. It is the city before it wakes up: the milkman's bicycle bell, the smell of someone's first cup of tea, the sky turning from ink to orange over the rooftops. By the time the traffic starts, I am home, showered, and sitting with my own tea, feeling as if I have been given an extra hour that no one else knows about.
You do not need to be fast. You only need to show up tomorrow.
That, as far as I can tell, is the whole secret. Not just to running, but to most of life.