For me running means freedom. When I run I feel free – and it frees me from all the stresses and things that worry me or at least they don’t seem so important by the end of the run. Even on a bad run day, I have never come back wishing I hadn’t gone out.

Today I got back into the Pentland Hills for the first time in ages. All the training for the Lochaber marathon in April was done on roads. (I trained for my first Dublin marathon mostly in the hills and really felt it when I had to do 26.2 miles on tarmac – so I learned my lesson that my long marathon training runs needed to be done on pavements).

Anyhow, I realised today how much I’d missed the hills – even when the rain came on (as it seems to do a lot at the moment) it was so much nicer than running in streets in the rain with cars flying past. There is no monotony in the hills. The hills mean real freedom – for me the freedom to plod on and push myself that bit more and, as I look round at the higher hills, consider what challenges I can aim for in the future.

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