Once there was a Long distance runner, He loved to run and had been doing so for a long time. The Runners passion was so great that he would often talk to his friends with great enthusiasm about running that many wanted to join him in running too.
As such it was no surprise that when he set himself his greatest challenge yet, to run the length of Britain His closest friends all agreed to join him in the race.
I say his closest friends, there were of course some exceptions, a few people scoffed at his idea, questioned his sanity and how doing this race would actually help his, and others, lives. But despite this he still had a group of friends eager to run this race with him.
The day finally arrived and the runner turned up at Lands end and sure enough there was the rowdy gang otherwise known as his friends. As he looked around he saw that many of his friends had brought tents, large camping bags, great sums of money, laptops with internet connections and some even their work!
He could barely believe his eyes, it was almost as though they had brought their whole lives with them and it would certainly be impossible for them to run so heavily laden! He started to plead with his friends to take off their bags, he had already planned and paid for the places they would stay at along the way, but they wouldn't listen and started the race with their heavy bags on their backs.
Sure enough when lunchtime arrived the friends who hadn't taken a backpack arrived at the restaurant the runner had booked. As they sat down for a meal the Runner picked up the phone and started calling all the mobile phones of the friends with backpacks. They were some distance behind but were in good spirits, they too had stopped for a meal they had brought with them in their backpacks. Again the runner encouraged them to leave their packs behind and to simply run without them (rather than walk as they had been) but the friends wouldn't listen.
When the first evening came and the non backpack runners arrived at their hotel again the long distance runner called the backpacked runners. By this point a couple had already stopped, they had found that running with a backpack was just too hard work and they weren't going to continue. Those left were in a variety of states, some were determinded that they were going to finish the race, no matter what. Others were starting to feel less certain and had started to wonder if Running really was for them at all. It seamed just a bit too uncomfortable and when they could just drive to the finish line there seamed no real point in running. Plus all this camping seamed rather dangerous, why weren't they just at home in bed?
Over the next few days the backpacked runners slowely but surely stopped running, some found their backpacks were just too heavy, some had got lost and all lost faith in what they were doing. After a while their mobiles had stopped working and the friend, despite all his attempts to call them just couldn't get through. Meanwhile the other friends who ran with the Runner reached the finish line and celebrated the race they had run.
