So Chris, you have been a runner most of your life?
Yes, my parents were both runners, they got into it because of the Great North Run, and I sort of followed on. I ran as a kid, joined a club, and did cross country and athletics through my teenage years. I was an 800m runner and I loved it. It’s so fascinating because it’s almost impossible to get it right. I always think an 800m race feels like a great idea until about 500m, then you are hanging on for dear life. I was a decent club runner but nothing out of the ordinary, but I loved it and with a few breaks I’ve continued ever since.
My running and writing kind of have always existed in parallel to each other. I've been running for 30 years, I've been writing for 30 years. And I've always used both of them in different but complementary ways to manage my mental health – to manage challenges that I have with anxiety, all of which is linked to being autistic, which is not something I knew about until a year or two ago.
You've said that being out in nature, running outside, is very important to you
Yes, where I live, just over the water from Dundee, I can run up the hill at the back of the house and within five minutes I'm on to farm tracks and paths. And with a very short drive, there's a forest, a huge wooded area on the very northeastern tip of Fife, or there's other bits of woodland and beach and mountains that aren't terribly far away. Running in nature, that's always been the most important thing for me.
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Did the inspiration for your novel, Fray, come about on a run?
Yes, the spark for it came up in Glencoe, in the Highlands, out on a run on an October day in 2016. I was going up this mountain route – it's not a race that's run anymore, but there used to be a vertical kilometre race out of Kinlochleven, about 5km along but 1km straight up [in elevation gain]. I wanted to give it a go just for myself. And it was a bit grey, a bit wet, but normal – not terrible weather conditions, and it wasn't forecast to be either. But about halfway up, at about 500 metres up this side of this Munro, the weather totally changed. All the visibility went, completely torrential rain started, a real storm situation. And it was really scary. I knew I had to turn back just to be safe.
I'd been wrestling with how to honestly write about mental health and that moment of feeling so helpless and vulnerable against the landscape, against the weather – that was the spark. I knew this was my setting. This intensity that I'm feeling in this moment of panic trying to get down off the side of the mountain safely, is the same experience that I want a reader to have reading the book. Of course they are safe and dry and experiencing it at home, but I want them to have a sense of how it feels to be out on a run in that sort of situation – and sort of bring them along with that.
So I guess running is for you both a tool for managing mental health but, in a way, it’s also a metaphor for it?
Exactly. In my book, the narrator is also going through their own challenges, but there's a strong sense throughout all of it about the importance of running and breathing - breath is a thing that keeps coming up. During an anxiety experience, or a panic attack, there’s that feeling of not being able to catch your breath or feeling like you're choking and you just can't control it. But then contrasting that with a good running experience, where you might be breathing hard, but you're in control and you're connected to your body and you feel really composed. There was something there about the physicality of running, things working, that was a really important way for me of discussing one mental health challenge.
As a lifelong runner, do you think you’ve sort of been using running as a kind of preventative medicine?
Absolutely, and I think also without really realising it until I was older. The times of my life when I’m running, I'm happier and healthier, suffer fewer mental health problems. I'm more in control of everything. Life is just better, full stop. And at times where I'm not running because of illness or injury or just a moment where I've sort of fallen out of love with it, things are worse, you know, on a very simple basic level. Running makes every day better. It makes your life better. And much easier to control.
And now I use running very deliberately to manage anxiety. So for instance, at the moment I’m doing book events, which has been wonderful and very exciting. But one thing that I knew before I was doing that all this stuff is I have to run in the morning, before I go, as a way of managing my anxiety in advance.
Equally, if on any given day, I'm struggling or my anxiety is sparking or I'm just feeling grey and depressed and overwhelmed for whatever reason, then 10 or 20 minutes of running will not fix it, but it will make it better.
You mentioned that while you are loving running, you aren't racing at the moment at all?
Since Covid, I haven’t raced or really trained compared to how I used to. I have just been focusing on enjoying it actually, because I have a terrible habit of overdoing it or getting injured or just kind of being a bit over enthusiastic with training too hard. So the last couple of years I’ve actually run without a watch, just getting out and enjoying it and that’s actually been fantastic.
Did you struggle particularly with nerves or anxiety before races?
Anxiety is an interesting word because, obviously, everybody has some anxiety and that's a normal reaction to certain situations. The problem is that the same word also attached to people who may have extreme anxiety conditions that will totally derail their lives. I think feeling a bit nervous before a race is normal and helps – it can be quite exciting and then sort of balances against the lovely sense of achievement and the rush and exhaustion after it. I think we're need to make our own judgement on that. What is your running for, what is it helping? There’s such a range of what running can be: it doesn’t have to be one version. You might race at some points of your life and not others. And that’s great. Running is there for all of us to take what works best for us.
And for you, it gives you that crucial space?
Published: 17 May 2023 Haruki Murakami – I really love his running book [Best wireless headphones]. He talks about how a lifetime commitment to running gives you the endurance to write, which is interesting because writing is tiring – it’s sitting down, but it’s a very physical process you sort of go through. But he also talks in that book about running for him not being a case of going for a run and methodically working through all the things you need to solve. It's the exact opposite: it's letting go of language, sort of stepping into a wordless space where you're free. I find that that's useful for writing, but much more importantly, that's useful just for life.
But of course running can seem a bit daunting, especially to those struggling with mental health difficulties ...
I know running can be hard at first and it's a big commitment. But I think if, if at any point in our lives, we introduce some running to it, that's going to make things better. You could be 13 or you could be 65, it doesn't matter when you choose to do it. There's a wonderful community waiting to welcome you to parkrun or to clubs or whatever it might be. It's just there for any of us to to embrace at any point if you're physically able to. And I just think it's just the best.
Finally, I have to ask, is it true that you wrote your novel on the bus to work?
[Laughs] Yes I was very busy at work and the only time I had to write was a 10 or 15 minute bus journey into work, and then coming back home again the evening. And that was my little space, just a tiny bit at a time. And that's a real lifelong lesson from running, actually. You know, you're probably not going to write a good novel in a month. But if you keep going - exactly like with running - if you keep doing bit and a bit, regularly and you don’t get put off when it gets tough, you don't give up and you've just kind of persist, then actually over time, you can really put something quite phenomenal together, whether that's training for a marathon and ultra or writing a novel.
Fray, by Chris Carse Wilson, is published by HarperCollins
Kate is Runner’s World's acting commissioning editor. She writes about all things running, from deep dives into the science to the latest gadget reviews. Kate has worked in media and journalism for too many years to count. Before joining RW, she was Life and Style editor at the Guardian and has also written for everyone from World Athletics to Lonely Planet. She also worked in TV for 10 years. Kate is also a qualified coach, sub three hour marathoner, Guinesss World Record holder and has run all the Marathon Majors. She loves running around in 400m circles best, though.
