Your Dad

I've decided to run a mile. Which, depending on how you say it, is either the start of something or the fastest way to get away from it — because "run a mile" is one of our oldest ways of describing avoidance. The Americans got there first, with "I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole" (first put on record in 1832, and itself a descendant of "I wouldn't handle it with a pair of tongs" from 1639). The British kept the idea but swapped the tool: we "wouldn't touch it with a barge pole." Somewhere along the way, we also started saying we'd "run a mile" instead — the pole turned into legs, and the meaning stayed exactly the same: get as far away from this as possible. So the title is deliberate, and more than a little ironic. For most of my life, "run a mile" is precisely what I'd have done at the mere mention of exercise. This site is the opposite: a year of actually doing it — the early mornings, the heavy legs and the small wins — documented one honest mile at a time. Welcome to running a mile, in the sense nobody ever intended.