Just Finished Reading: Running with the Pack – Thoughts from the Road on Meaning and Mortality by Mark Rowlands (FP: 2013)

There are philosophy books that make you feel you are sitting in a lecture theatre being lectured at and that you are expected to keep quiet and take notes. Other books seem like a chat in a beer garden with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while who you know did Philosophy back when you casually knew him at University but had no idea what he’s been doing in the intervening years. This is one of those books.

Part autobiography, part rambling conversation on the meaning of life and part explanation, to himself as much as to anyone else, of why he runs and part realisation, as his body can no longer shrug off the inevitable damage long distance running inflicts, of his human fallibility this is definitely a great way to spend a lazy weekend catching up with the author since his last book ‘The Philosopher and the Wolf’. Although largely focused on running, something I hardly ever do unless I really need to, you can still gain a great deal of insight into life and ideas on the best way to live in, without feeling any pressure at all to run your first marathon. Oddly, despite the fact that I do not own a single pair of running shoes I did feel a slight compunction to at the very least think about going for a long walk (maybe when it stops raining). If a book on philosophy can get me thinking about getting physically active (at least in a minimal sense) there has to be something to this author’s writings! Any philosophical heaviness, rather inevitably around Nietzsche and my favourite depressive Arthur Schopenhauer, was quickly grounded in the mud and the endless tarmac of road running. In fact grounded is a word I’d happily use to describe the author’s approach to the whole philosophical endeavour. He’s not interested in scoring points or showing you the view from his ivory tower. He’s down here, in the mud and the blood and the pain with the rest of us, endeavouring to give us some insight into the human condition drawing on his own experience as much as the thoughts of the great European philosophers of the last few centuries.

 

If you’ve ever thought about reading a philosophical text but had been put off by the more academic ‘proper’ books on the subject I can recommend this, and his previous book, as a breath of fresh air in that department. The author has the great skill of teaching without appearing to do so, to get you to think about things and in ways you hadn’t really considered before, to start thinking philosophically as you run one foot in front of the other with your own breath keeping rhythm with the sound of rubber hitting pavement and the blood pumping in your ears. Recommended.