Christopher Eccleston tells us why he is celebrating turning 60 by running the London Marathon on 21 April to raise money for Big Issue – and you can help him on his way
I started running in 1989 and was very quickly addicted. I would run 10 miles, five or six days a week. Sometimes more. I did that for 25 years, until the kids came along.
I can’t speak highly enough about running when it comes to mental health. When I was admitted to hospital in 2016, a doctor asked my general history. I told him about the running. He said, what you’re doing there is self-medicating. You’ve perhaps always been lower in serotonin than some people and you’re raising it by those mammoth runs. When I was hospitalised, I think not being able to go for my run deepened my depression.
And it’s true, I always feel better after a run. Within 20 minutes, my thoughts become more positive, I become more optimistic and more proactive. It must be chemical. So I can’t think of anything more important to me in my life, other than my children, than exercise.
You just step out of the door and you’re doing it. And you can take it anywhere with you. It means fresh air and, if you’re lucky, nature. I head for the most greenery I can.
Running also helps me as a form of meditation. I remember one day I got so deep in my thoughts that I kind of came to during a run. I was probably five miles in. My body could do it automatically in a physical sense, and I’ll never forget that feeling of coming back to the reality of my feet hitting the pavement. I don’t know where I’d been. But I’m always in search of that deep meditation that can come with it.
When I’m working, running helps keep me out of the bar – and allows me to go to the bar. Because I feel like I deserve a reward when I do it.
My favourite place to run is between Porthgwarra and Land’s End on the Southwest Coastal Path. You have to concentrate on every footstep because you’re on a coastal path and there’s something very meditative about that. It’s more like fell running. You’ve got the oxygen coming off the ocean, all the beauty around you – my great ambition is to run the whole coastal path over a number of weeks. Maybe take a tent.
I’ve run all over the world. As I say, it’s something you take with you. When I lived in LA, I used to love running in Topanga Cany
