Perspectives

It’s amazing how a mode of transport can change your perspective. We all create mental maps of environment. Change the way you move, and suddenly the map has to change too.

I’ve always been a walker to a certain extent. I don’t have a car, so for years I’ve been limited to going where I can walk or maybe, just occasionally, get a bus or the tube. A few times as a youngster I did walks across London, probably up to 10 miles, maybe more. But in time my footsteps began to carve regular, shorter, tracks.

Starting running was the first thing to open up my world. For the first time I discovered the local parks and canals which at most I’d walked through or over before. It got even better when I started doing long distance. Travelling 15 miles on foot is an amazing experience. Places that were once isolated dots, connected only by a string of tube line, suddenly become parts of a whole. And you find yourself seeing places you’d never venture otherwise.

Of course, even a long distance runner can ignore these possibilities. I’ve always been, perhaps, a little naughty with my tendency to stop off at a museum or two on a long run, rather than keeping going straight on. I don’t reckon it spoils the impact of that training distance really though.

A whole new perspective has come with the addition of a bike. In many cases I’m going to the same places, but with a whole new way of looking. Looking for green traffic lights instead of red, and the difficulties of turning right. Or the places where a road goes through a dip with the pavement high above. Places that were far away, whether by foot or public transport, brought closer. And looking for railings to lock my bike to… I still get to feel superior to car drivers as I wiz down bike lanes and between bollards set to keep them out. Suddenly even rush hour has a positive. Gridlocked cars are easy to ride past, and actually make turning right easier. I’ve never moved so fast at 5.30 pm in London.

I read some years ago that some massive percentage of people never goes more than 100 feet from their car. When driving up mountains they’ll park, maybe walk a little up a path, take a few pictures and head back. They never go somewhere unless there’s a car park. I’m even more gobsmacked by some runners, who, having done a run, then go out and measure it with their cars. It is possible to measure a run online or get a gps system… Besides rather undoing any ‘good’ from running by going round belching out car fumes, it must make their runs a lot less pleasant than mine. Confining themselves to roads where their car can go? Maybe breathing in the exhaust fumes of some other runner measuring their run? Why, when they have the option of so many more possibilities with the car’s needs left behind?

Whatever form of transport you use, and personal rules you impose, the world takes on a different shape, and even looks different.