Running for My Mind

By Patience Atuhaire

This month three years ago, I started running. I had to learn to walk, to learn to run.

I had never before struggled with being unfit. I walked enough in my daily routine and during field work. But life had got in the way.

I first attempted to save myself in 2015, failing spectacularly. I had hit bumps in some aspects of life and needed to win, or at least progress, at this one thing. But I was impatient for results, had zero confidence in my efforts, and the environment in which I was trying to jog was just not right. I simply gave up.

In the ensuing years, I lost any and all will to try. Walking a short distance to catch a boda boda was a struggle, and I wrestled with body image and confidence issues.

A work-related training session with colleagues in Kenya in 2018 turned out to be the inspiration I needed. They had a WhatsApp group for runners in which they kept one another updated and some woke up during that week to run, before classes. One evening, someone organised a football match that shook me awake; I couldn’t really run across the pitch without feeling like my chest had been set ablaze.

By the end of that week, I knew that I had to get off the couch. I started walking from work when I finished early, and on some weekends, my brother practically dragged me up the hill in the neighbourhood.

In a few weeks I could run my first kilometre, stopping to catch my breath a few times. In a few more weeks, I managed my first treadmill 5k, then a 5k on the road. I’m now aiming for half marathon distances, if everything stays on track.

At about the time I was getting up on wobbly legs, I worked on a piece on why Uganda was the world’s fittest country, according to a study just published then. I dived into a world of fitness groups, and the people in them looked no different from me. Coming off a walk one evening after I had gathered the interviews, I sat down to write. The structure of the piece flowed with such ease, it felt like my brain was just emerging from a fog. It was one of the most enjoyable pieces of work I did that year.

Running has become the thing that’s lifted me up on the worst of days, and helped me cope with a deep personal loss in early 2020. The morning after the longest night during which I had hardly caught any sleep, puffy-eyed, I went for a run. The darkness I was facing would still be staring me down, but by the time I finished that 8k, I knew that I could dislodge the boulder-sized lump in my heart, if I tackled it the way one would a run. In subsequent months, the searing pain and anger spurred me on, mile after mile, until they were extinguished by pouring sweat.

During the frenzy that was the 2021 election season, when we journalists regularly came face to face with bullets and tear gas in the streets, and distraught families desperate for word on their missing loved ones, there were moments when I could not absorb any more trauma. I just couldn’t take another heart-rending story. Running made me feel that if I could take on one more hill, one more kilometre, I could summon the courage to tell one more story.

It’s been three years and, fortunately, I haven’t suffered any injuries yet.  I have run on paved park lanes in one city and along a highway in another, but the loveliest run so far was on Gulu’s freshly-laid tarmac.

I use the time to think through assignments, and have ‘written’ whole scripts while pounding the tarmac. But other times I make personal plans and think through schedules. Sometimes I hold onto a beautiful memory and let it carry me through the most arduous stretches. But on many occasions, I just run; no thoughts, no ideas, just the sound of my footfalls, and an eye on the traffic and the potholes.

I have learnt to fortify myself against the toxicity that men hurl at women on Kampala’s streets, so much so that I no longer contend with bouts of anxiety and self-consciousness when I step out. I am also confident that I am fitter than many cat-callers or self-appointed fitness coaches dishing out unsolicited, patronising advice to women joggers. My only fear remains that of stray dogs.

So, do I jump out of bed at 6am raring to go? Occasionally. On some mornings, I groan and moan about why I torture myself, throwing the covers back over my head and even convincing myself it is raining outside. But then I think about the morning breeze hitting my face, that immeasurable elation when I summit the hill where I stop to watch the sunrise, the way a run sets the pace of my day, and that is usually enough to get me to lace-up my trainers.

Running has become my exclusive ‘me time’; that one hour three times a week, away from screens, books, and any distraction; when it is just me, my music and the hills. I have found a hobby I love immensely, and hope will be part of my life, for life.

Patience Atuhaire is a Kampala-based BBC News Correspondent.