Jamal learned to hate exercise as a child and avoided it until he was in his thirties.
His school only cared about those who were good at it, and he wasn’t.
The PE department thought successful school sport meant the football, rugby and cricket teams winning leagues and reaching cup finals. Those not good enough to be selected were annoying inconveniences to be ignored or humiliated.
To Jamal sport meant being embarrassed and either too cold or too hot, accompanied with anxiety he’d get accidentally involved and shouted at for mistakes he didn’t know he’d made.
In a particularly mortifying incident, a group of popular, sporty boys convinced him he’d made the rounders team after he’d made a pretty good catch in a lesson. He was pleased and even told his parents, who’d been surprised but proud and excited about coming to see him play.
The next day he went to the PE office to ask about when the game would be and found out the school did not have a rounders team and it had all been a joke.
Even the teachers had laughed.
It was a great relief to him when he left school and for a while he thought beyond walking – which he occasionally enjoyed – he’d never do anything that made him sweat again.
And – through university and the first part of his career as a software engineer – he didn’t.
Then, after Covid, the company he worked for went fully remote and he realised he was putting on weight because he hardly moved from his air-conditioned office – spending his days working and his evenings playing computer games.
Then his dad had a mild heart attack and he accepted – reluctantly – the need to make changes.
Running seemed the best bet.
He had shorts and t-shirts already so only needed to buy trainers. It seemed the least fuss, and Willerby was surrounded by a spiderweb of footpaths and bridleways that were pretty all year round.
He could – Jamal figured – always just stop and enjoy the scenery if it all got too horrible.
But it didn’t.
Jamal was surprised how well he took to it.
This was because - he discovered later – without meaning to he got his early training exactly right. He didn’t try to go too fast or far and when he felt too tired, he just walked.
He liked being out in the fresh air, and soon he was going longer distances quicker and quicker.
Before long he was running almost every day and missed it when he didn’t.
He liked how people in the village began identifying him as a runner – liked how the dog-walkers waved at him, liked it when the other Willerby runners showed him their routes.
He bought proper equipment – a running belt, a watch and a headtorch for the winter.
He downloaded training plans to improve his times. Most weeks he entered the Beckworth Parkrun and found – to his surprise – he was usually in the top twenty in around 22 minutes.
Then he hit a frustrating plateau – he didn’t seem able to get any faster regardless of how much he ran.
He told Dan about it while they were stretching on the bench opposite the Green Man.
“I don’t know why it bothers me,” said Jamal. “I’ve never been competitive, but I just think it would be nice to be really good at something - maybe finish in the top three – you know, right at the front.”
“What time would you need for that?” Dan asked.
“Most weeks, just under twenty minutes would do it,” Jamal said.
Dan whistled through his teeth. “That’s a league above – no good running with me if you want times like that. Have you thought about joining a club? There’s a couple in Beckworth.”
“Yeah,” Jamal said. “But both are in the evenings and I know I wouldn’t keep it up. I always run in the morning – I just need to get up and go. Later in the day my motivation just drains away.”
Dan stopped in the middle of a stretch to look hard at Jamal.
“What’s the earliest you’d do?”
Jamal shrugged. “To be honest as early as possible. This time of year, I wake up when it gets light. Sometimes I’m off by half-five.”
“OK,” said Dan. “I don’t know if this is something I’m allowed to say and if anyone asks how you found out, don’t say it was from me – but next time you’re up that early go up the hill to the old fort. A running club meets there very early. I ran with them a bit a couple of years ago, but those boys were too fast and they don’t wait. They’re rough but nice enough – if you can keep up with them even for a bit, I never could - you’d be quick.”
The next day, Jamal went to find the club.
Getting to the fort took about twenty minutes - a dawn walk down the street, a turn onto a footpath through the June-green wheat fields, and then a short knee-burner of a climb up the only hill of any substance in the area.
Jamal bathed in it all, his head full of birdsong and the light rustle of the morning breeze through leaves.
As he neared the foot of the hill, he caught a sharp tang of woodsmoke – common in the autumn and winter from the many village fireplaces and burners, but unexpected and unseasonal in midsummer. Looking up, he saw whisps of white smoking curling lazily into the blue sky above where he knew the old fort to be.
Drawing closer, he heard voices –indistinct and interspersed with what sounded like shouted instructions or commands. There were animal sounds too – dogs barking, the low rumble of cattle and a persistent, arrogant cockerel.
Jamal gained the final bulge of the hill and saw where there were usually only rolls and folds of worked earth there was a palisade fence of sharpened wooden stakes with a gate set into it.
It opened just wide enough for three men to slip out through the gap.
They were wearing loose-fitting short red dresses gathered around the waist with leather belts and were barefoot. They were pushing and shoving at each other and laughing, jumping up and down, calling to each other and taking turns to drink from a wooden flask.
Self-conscious in his Lycra shorts and running singlet he walked towards them, but figuring since Dan had said he’d run with them before it must be safe enough.
The men did not seem surprised – even giving a sort of ironic cheer when they saw him. One of them – the tallest at well over six feet – ran on the spot, pointed at Jamal and then pointed down the path back down the hill. Jamal nodded, which made all three men laugh.
The man pointed at himself, “Aetius!” He said – then he pointed at a shorter, stockier man. “Alban!” Next, he pointed at a slimmer man with a dark curly beard. “Africanus!”
Finally, he pointed at Jamal. “Jamal?”, Jamal said.
“Jam-Al?” Aetius said, then more confidently “Jam-Al!”
The big man’s grin was infectious.
Then, before Jamal had a chance to try to ask where they were going, they were off down the track.
To begin with, on the downhill he thought them not much quicker than him but when they hit a flat stretch he saw he was going to struggle. The men – just ahead of him to begin with – ran with long strides that ate up the ground, leaping off the trail where it was rough and uneven before dropping back onto it when it smoothed out again. They laughed and called to each other, shouting what sounded like good-natured insults.
Within a quarter of a mile Jamal was breathing heavily and they were pulling ahead. Concentrating most on staying on his feet, he had a feeling that while similar, the route wasn’t the quite the same path he’d come up on.
Things were different – the track twisted in unfamilar ways and there was more wildlife than was usual on his morning rounds; thick clouds of insects, clutches of flushed songbirds exploding from thickets, a dozen or so hare running across the fields and deer plunging away from the noise into woods that were closer and thicker than the scrubby growth he was used to.
Half a mile further on and they’d already put two hundred yards between them and him, and with each step the gap widened. Annoyed at how quickly he was being left behind Jamal put his head down and willed himself to greater speed but he couldn’t keep it up; five minutes later he had a stitch and dropped back to his usual running pace.
When he looked to the horizon the runners were gone.
Jamal slowed to a jog, a walk and then stopped.
Doubled over with his hands on his knees with his stich stabbing his side and sweat dripping into his eyes, he fought to catch his breath and bring down his heartbeat.
Just as they’d been too fast for Dan, they were too fast for him, but as Jamal jogged home, he was more inspired than defeated.
It just meant he had work to do.
From then on for the rest of the summer, Jamal went to the fort every morning.
The three men found him hilarious.
One time Aetius offered him a piggy-back ride and another morning Africanus, to the delighted hoots of the other two men, presented him with a small tortoise which he’d named “Al-Jam.” Jamal could see the ribbing was good natured and didn’t mind it – while he was the butt of the jokes, he was also in on them.
And by sticking at it, he made progress.
Most days he felt he managed to keep up for longer than the previous one, and before long his three clubmates were noticing too. As they saw him improve their joshing became less mocking and more encouraging, with the three calling “Ire, Jam-Al!”, at him when he, inevitably to begin with, dropped behind.
As he began to run with them for longer, he noticed more about his three companions. They were all scarred – Aetius was missing half his left ear, Alban had a long scar on the back of his neck and Africanus’ calf was marked by a deep pit.
And they weren’t all the same standard.
Alban found things hardest going. The first time Jamal noticed, after a couple of miles, that he was sweating and breathing almost as hard as was felt like a breakthrough – irrefutable evidence at least one of the men was human and might be beatable.
Jamal upped his training and began arranging his days around running - not just early in the morning but also longer, slower runs in the cooler late afternoon and early evening. He tracked his times and distances carefully, recording them on a colour-coded excel spreadsheet and becoming particular about what he ate and drank.
Soon, Jamal found he was keeping up for ten minutes.
Then it was fifteen.
Then nearly twenty. As they went further together, he saw he was right about the route they took not being the same as any he took without them. While the landscape seemed mostly the same shape – except for the HS2 scar and the old railway cutting, which weren’t there at all – what was on it was different. There were no hedges or fences, and the fields were not sown. There were far fewer sheep and cows and those he did see were smaller and wirier.
Until the last time, the runs always ended the same way – the three men left him behind and by the time he’d recovered enough to think straight, the world was back to how it always was.
Jamal’s final run was in the middle of August.
It began with him well-rested following a big pasta dinner and an early night.
After coffee, he knew this was the day he’d go for it.
For the past month, Jamal had been more strategic than his running companions realised, deliberately dropping out when he knew he could have gone on for longer and saving energy for more intense training later in the day.
For the last week – to the confusion of Aetius, Alban and Africanus who’d got used to him improving - he’d deliberately dropped out very early, and not run at all later.
They didn’t know it, but he was tapering. Allowing himself to recover so he’d be in peak condition before an important race.
That last run began as they all did; Aetius in front then Africanus, and then Alban with Jamal tucked in just behind on his right shoulder.
And Jamal felt strong.
He was even tempted to take the lead but didn’t, partially because he wanted to keep something in reserve but mostly because he’d never finished the route and could lose any lead working out the final stretch back to the fort if he got lost. He was confident it wasn’t much further than he’d been because he’d kept up with Alban for a long enough to be sure he didn’t have much more in him.
Jamal’s companions noticed early on that something was different and were impressed, grinning over their shoulders at him and grunting “Jam-Al” approvingly.
They neared a thicket that marked the furthest Jamal had gone before fading away.
Jamal felt as strong as he had setting out but then, Aetius sped up,
This was just as much a surprise to Alban as it was to Jamal, who heard him grunt what sounded like a swearword.
The runners took a turn and emerged from the treeline back into a landscape of fields and meadows. The path widened. Jamal moved past Alban to take third position behind Africanus.
Aetius quickened again, as if he knew this was a race.
Jamal was now feeling it too – aware of his breathing and feeling the faint beginnings of a stitch in his side but motivated by Africanus dropping behind him too, he did not allow himself to slow.
The world outside his body began to fade and shrink, almost all his concentration now on keeping his technique, smoothly striding legs and smoothly swinging arms. There was a lot of pain now, but he’d built enough experience at running fast to know it could be managed – he allowed himself to briefly acknowledge it and then dismiss it as irrelevant, reminding himself he could go at this speed for much longer with more discomfort than he was feeling.
The pain was there, but it wasn’t important.
But that didn’t leave him much to think with and it was only dimly, he became aware he was running through a village.
There were woven wooden fences to his sides, and he saw the domed roofs of roundhouses behind them. Ahead of him a flock of chickens broke into two parts, clucking indignant complaints. He heard children shouting and saw a group of them running alongside him for a few seconds before dropping away.
Then as quickly as it had appeared the village was gone.
The path narrowed again and began to climb.
They were on the hill leading back to the fort and it was just Jamal and Aetius.
This had to be the final stretch, but the pain was now breaking through.
His thighs burned and he was breathing faster than he’d ever done before. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest and hear the blood rushing in his ear.
But Aetius was going no faster, and Jamal realised the little more he had to give might be enough.
He forced himself to speed up and drew level.
For an instant the bigger man kept pace, but only for an instant.
Then – incredibly - he too was dropping back and as he did Jamal looked up and saw the sharpened ends of the palisade fence.
He was at the top of the hill, free and clear of all the others, out on his own.
He sped up again, the fort getting bigger and bigger as it rushed towards him until he was close enough to bang it with the palms of his hands so hard he felt it shift.
Jamal stopped, gasping and heaving.
He doubled over and thew up pasta, water and coffee. Hot sweat stung his eyes and soaked his vest and shorts.
A second later he was on the ground with first Aetius, then Africanus and then Alban on top of him, smelling of new sweat and woodsmoke
For a moment he feared they’d taken defeat so badly they were attacking him, but before the thought had a chance to take hold he’d been pulled to his feet and hoisted onto Aetius’ shoulders. Then, dizzy and light-headed, he found himself paraded around as they chanted his name over and over.
“Jam-AL, Victoris! Jam-AL, Victoris! Jam-AL, Victoris!”
Still nauseous and aching, Jamal could not stop grinning as he pumped his arm in the air and chanted with the others.
“Jam-AL, Victoris! Jam-AL, Victoris! Jam-AL, Victoris!”
Jamal remembered that moment and those that came just after as among the best of his whole life.
Arm in arm with three friends, looking down the hill at the whisps of smoke rising from the village below them as the sun dried his shirt, listening to and watching them rerun the race through mime and words he only half understood; Africanus presenting his tortoise to Alban and everyone laughing about it; the body shaking claps on the back, the fierce embraced goodbyes, and the walk back down the hill with their chanting still ringing in his ears.
Jamal did not just finish in the top three of the Beckworth Park Run.
The following Saturday – in a time of eighteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds –he won it.
Dan was there and Sally, his wife who was watching with their son Sammy, saw him cross the line.
Later that week, while stretching on the bench outside the Green Man, Dan asked Jamal how much the training with the fort boys had helped.
“A lot. I’ve been running with them all summer,” Jamal said. “I stuck with it and the last time I was with them the whole way round and pulled ahead at the end. Dan, I beat them.”
“You did not!” Dan said, whistling through his teeth.
Jamal nodded, hardly able to believe it himself. “Yeah, I really did, “he said. He grinned, remembering something he had learned a long time ago in school. “Yeah. Veni, Vedi, Vici.”
Paced by shades from a Roman legion??