Like London in the summer of 2012, the well-polished city was showing off, every monument and statue gleaming, every column and cobblestone sparkling. At the Eiffel Tower — not far from the marathon finish line at Les Invalides — I turned around, thrilled to find that I was already 3.5 miles in, and in spite of the humidity, my legs felt fresh and strong, and I felt… well, euphoric.

Was this the fabled “runner’s high” I had always dismissed as rubbish? Certainly, the combination of exercise endorphins, the physical beauty of a Paris morning and Charli XCX’s Brat album in my ears was doing something serious to my brain chemistry.

• Read our full guide to Paris

I was also suddenly seeing the city from a new perspective. I’ve long understood that some places are only properly experienced on a bicycle, horseback or skis, or attached to a scuba tank. I like a nice walk as much as the next woman, but I hadn’t realised how exploring a place can change when you pick up the pace a bit.

Signing up for a race got me started

That’s probably because I had never been a runner. Until 18 months ago the furthest I had run since school cross-country was a charity 5k, 15 years before.

When, in early summer 2024, my friend Rosie WhatsApped our group to ask if anyone would join her in the Royal Parks Half Marathon in London, I rashly said yes, to be supportive. When the registration forms arrived, I gulped, counted the weeks until the race (17), downloaded the Couch to 5K app, then printed off a 12-week beginner’s half-marathon training plan from Runner’s World.

Jane with her friend Rosie at the Royal Parks Half Marathon in London

The first few weeks were pitiful. I couldn’t see how I would ever manage three miles, never mind 13. But I had recently relocated to Brighton, which meant I could run (read: elderly jog) by the sea before work, a spectacular start to any day, even with (as on most days) a stiff headwind. I soon found that not only was I getting fitter, but on the days I managed a couple of miles in the morning, I also felt happier, less tired, cross and tetchy — a benefit when you spend hours a day commuting on Thameslink.

That October, along with 16,000 others, I set off from Hyde Park through Westminster, up Whitehall, along the Mall and around Green Park and Kensington Gardens. I was thrilled to clock in at 2:02, which I’m confident would have been sub-two hours had I not stopped to be sick several times at mile 11 (I blame the wine gums).

Clocking miles everywhere from South Carolina to Panama

But by then, the race had become irrelevant to my unexpected enjoyment of running — particularly when in new places. Later that October, on Johns Island in South Carolina, I ran along the edge of the Kiawah River, through forests, beside creeks and inlets, past huge white-painted houses with porches bedecked in pumpkins, and under the branches of ancient oaks dripping in Spanish moss. In November I ran (sweatily) through the colourful streets of Panama City’s historic Casco Viejo and along the Cinta Costera, the coastal beltway with views across the bay to the famous canal. On the country’s near-deserted southern coast, in Cambutal, I plodded along potholed, barely used roads beside the volcanic, black sand beach. And on Islas Secas, a private archipelago of 14 islands off the south coast of Panama, I ran around the picturesque airstrip, chasing giant iguanas across the tarmac while hungry-looking vultures watched beadily on.

Panama City’s Cinta Costera

ALAMY

Keen to keep up the miles in the bleak winter months, I signed up for a second half-marathon — in Palma de Mallorca, in March.

• Mallorca v Menorca: which is better?

With a course that snaked along the city’s seafront it looked to be a Balearic version of my weekend training trots to Rottingdean and Peacehaven (sort of).

There’s been huge growth in running tourism

In recent years running tourism — aka “racecations” — has boomed, with British competitors signing up in rapidly growing numbers for big city marathons overseas, including Prague, Seville and Rome, but also quirkier races such as the Antarctica Marathon, China’s Great Wall Marathon and the Icefjord Midnight Marathon in Greenland. As UK running clubs soar in popularity (quadrupling in number over the course of 2025, according to the running app Strava), holidays based around group runs are growing too. The youth tour company Contiki introduced run club trips last summer, designed for 18 to 35-year-olds and taking in tourist sites such as the Colosseum in Rome and Croatia’s Adriatic coastline, while myriad adventure travel firms are offering trail running trips to the Alps, the Dolomites, US national parks and Patagonia.

As my Palma race approached, however, I persistently failed to book flights, eventually realising I had signed up simply to make myself run through winter. And my Jedi mind trick on myself had worked.

That winter, on weekends away, I ran ten blustery miles beside the empty beach in Alnmouth, Northumberland, and another ten beside the wild Atlantic in Connemara. In the spring I explored the white, winding streets of Vejer de la Frontera in southern Spain, and the bucolic canalside farmland of Over-Amstel, outside Amsterdam. In the autumn I ran along the sun-drenched Atlanta Beltline, a former railway line now part of the urban redevelopment of Atlanta, Georgia, and through the rain-soaked streets of central Athens (which my cousin compared, not inaccurately, to “Birmingham with some old buildings”) from our apartment in the gritty, up and coming Keramikos neighbourhood, to the marble Panathenaic Stadium, site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

• Read our full guide to Athens

Packing my kit means I run wherever I go

While I still don’t self-identify as “a runner” and you’ll never catch me doing a whole marathon (13 miles is quite far enough, thanks), my carry-on suitcase now always contains my running kit. And it generally always gets used, although on a recent trip to Berlin my enthusiasm for the city’s nocturnal options meant I never did make that trot around Tempelhof, Hitler’s former airport. Next time.

And while discovering new places — and forming a fast relationship with them, on foot — is what has helped me see the point of running, running has also allowed me to see old places with fresh eyes. In September I ran through Brooklyn Heights in New York — the leafy neighbourhood of brownstones where I spent a delirious and formative decade — and along the Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront, facing the skyline of downtown Manhattan. For anyone who caught sight of me, sweating, beaming and sobbing all at the same time, sorry.

Last November I spent the weekend in Paris again, this time with my parents. On a misty Sunday morning, while they strolled to Montmartre, I laced up my trainers and ran from our apartment in Canal Saint-Martin, retracing many of my steps from the previous summer and going much further. This time when I reached the Eiffel Tower — cloaked entirely in mist, with only its base visible — I dropped down from the pavement to the path beside the River Seine and joined the packs of local Parisian joggers. And for those ten miles that morning I belonged with them and the city belonged to me too.