Turing as a runner

Alan Turing ran a little while he was at Sherbourne school, usually when football was cancelled because of bad weather. He did not run while an undergraduate at Cambridge, preferring to row, but once he had won his fellowship to King's College he began to run more seriously, his frequent route being from Cambridge to Ely and back, a distance of around 50 km. He did a little running while at Bletchley but only when he moved to the National Physical Laboratory did he take up running more seriously. J F Harding was the secretary of Walton Athletic Club at this time and he recalls first meeting Turing out on a run:-

Looking back, he was the typical absent-minded professor. He looked different to the rest of the lads; he was rather untidily dressed, good quality clothes mind, but no creases in them; he used a tie to hold his trousers up; if he wore a necktie, it was never knotted properly; and he had hair that just stuck up at the back. He was very popular with the boys, but he wasn't one of them. He was a strange character, a very reserved sort, but he mixed in with everyone quite well: he was even a member of our committee.

We had no idea what he did, and what a great man he was. We didn't realise it until all the Enigma business came out. We didn't even know where he worked until he asked us if Walton would have a match with the NPL. It was the first time I'd been in the grounds. Another time, we went on our first ever foreign trip to Nijmegen in Holland he couldn't come, but he gave me five pounds, which was a lot of money in those days, and said "Buy the boys a drink for me".

I asked him one day why he punished himself so much in training. He told me "I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard; its the only way I can get some release."