Fresh in from far out - Galloway

The opening mile of the first Dumfries half-marathon, 20 years ago, took the runners along the towpath by the River Nith. However, after one enthusiast ran his groin into a metal bollard at the path end, the route was changed. Luckily, it happened with ample time for most of us to be warned. I also recall from the marathon's first year all the football-fit but untrained young lads who took part.

With no sense of how to pace themselves, they'd set off at speed, then stop as abruptly, hands on their sides, puffing fit to expire; then, just when we were about to catch them, off they'd go again. At the halfway mark, at the top of the hill out of Glencaple, I looked round and saw only a man and a dog behind us.

In those days, I was very conservative at the start of a race. While the optimistic philosophy of Frank, my running partner, was to shoot off and then to hang on till the end, I liked to have a bit in the tank for a strong finish. Running fast at the end of a long race was the only time in my life that I felt I was running at speed.

It was an experience I liked. I ran through my thirties as, beside me, Frank ran through his forties. We ran through post-1979-referendum Scotland together; we ran through Thatcherism together. We were a perfect match. I was always in a relationship on the brink of fruition or on the edge of disaster; Frank was adjusting to life after the end of a marriage.

We operated our running programme along the lines of Paul Klee's "taking a pencil for a walk". We explored the Solway coast, the Galloway Hills, the back roads of Nithsdale and Galloway's rich forests. Frank also had a decided penchant for private driveways and secluded estates, enjoying my reticence like a bold bad schoolboy.

As a scientist, Frank explained to me, as we ran, the intricate workings of the seasons and of life's other natural mysteries. Why shit is brown was, I recall, one of these and, for a publisher brave enough, the title of a sure-fire bestseller: Why is Shit Brown? - and other questions you've never dared to ask.

In our haphazard way, we accumulated, over the years, countless half-marathons and three full ones in Edinburgh, Dumfries and Loch Rannoch. The last was special, because it was there that the starter addressed us in a way I thought I'd never hear: "Will the athletes please step forward." "He means us, Frank, he means us!" But athleticism was more in our heads than in evidence.

Although I did once win a running cup as part of a pub team, The Shipwrecks, there was the time in Brampton when it took me miles to shake off some nine-year-old brat - that's miles in the hard middle of the race when no encouragement was coming my way. And there was also the Lockerbie 10K, in which I didn't overtake the Commonwealth walker until the four-mile mark; indeed, for two hundred yards going downhill, he was matching me. O Lord, I thought, the only guy in this race going at my pace - and he's walking!

At our running height, drunk on beauty and my own body's rhythms, I wrote "Summer Running":

The chestnut that all winter
cast broken rods on the water
now dips a head, full as a bison's,
to drink.

and the haze of bluebells is everywhere,
like desire.

It is that time of year again. On Sunday last, Frank and I did the Bluebell Run through Mabie Forest. I now keep my dodgy right knee, and a weak left ankle, bandaged. I don't care any more how slowly I go, just as long as I can feel a part of all that bursting beauty.

Frank is retiring and is going off to Italy for a year. I'll run on alone. Certain relationships don' t come around again. Frank and I have been running partners for 20 years. I'll never find another one like him.

"Summer Running" from Rough Seas (Canongate, 1987)