"My Competition is not against the runner next to me. It is against the runner inside of me..."
...read the improving message on the @UKrunchat Twitter feed, which I read before leaving the house yesterday morning for my longest ever run: 10 of your British miles. (16 of your crazy European kilometres.)
And as well as giving me the welcome distraction of imagining a tiny Dennis Quaid from 'Innerspace' in my head, piloting me along on my extremely wet and muddy trek, it was something that gave me some useful perspective as I daintily pranced around the puddles in my way, all the while being overtaken by much fitter, much thinner, well - let's face it - much better people than me.
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| Ooh look, it's in Swedish (Quite why it's called "the 24-hour chase", I'm not exactly sure.) |
Last year I rashly decided to apply for the London Marathon Ballot, and bizarrely enough I got through, which is apparently such a rare occurrence that the nice lady at the London Marathon Store who fitted me for some new running shoes the other day actually called her colleagues over to come and see, as if I was some sort of freak unknown to medical science.
Plenty have come before me and run in their personal best time, more will do so in years hence, and others still will overtake me on the day whilst dressed as a giant hamburger or Roland Rat, and nothing I do will change this - BUT the vomit-inducing quote above is correct - I actually can be a contender against my own expectations. And my current expectations are that I will collapse in a sobbing heap somewhere near Cutty Sark - so it's proving quite a nice challenge to try to prove myself wrong.
That I am even attempting to run anywhere is frankly something of a miracle, given the less than auspicious beginning to my running career. Running for me, like for most people, began at primary school - where getting us to do laps of the field was an excellent way for the games teacher to stand about and contemplate where his life had gone wrong without having to supervise us too much.
Then, on moving to secondary school, I was suddenly introduced to something called 'Cross-Country', which seemed to involve the entire school leaving the premises once a year, decamping to Ramsgate's King George VI Park, and running from there to Broadstairs and back along the seafront.
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| Looks quite nice, doesn't it? Druggies, chavs and people losing their virginity by the swings not pictured... |
I enjoyed this for a number of reasons:
a) I was rubbish at team sports, and in the words of my good friend Skee-Lo "always last to be picked, and in some cases never picked at all...". Cross-Country was different - firstly you didn't get picked, you just did it, however useless you were at it. Secondly, and more importantly, it was entirely down to you how you did - which also meant nobody else was blaming you for their team's poor performance. No fumbled catches, no running away from the rugby ball, and definitely no walking backwards over the goal line holding the ball on the ONE occasion you were entrusted to be goalie for a five-a-side football contest.
b) We left the school premises - DUH, weren't you paying attention?
c) It was quite easy to doss off, walk, take short cuts, or just not go anywhere at all.
It was this last point which I suspect was in our minds when my best friends and I, on arriving in the 6th form and being given the option of doing anything we pleased during Wednesday afternoon games lessons for the next 2 years, said "We'd like to do Cross-Country, please!" The idea started innocently enough, with us thinking we'd run from Ramsgate all the way to Broadstairs every week (a staggering distance of 2 miles / 3km) - and I suspect we may even have made it there once.
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| Four prime athletes, if ever I saw them... |
However, the turning point came when we realised that Rob's house was on our route. The first time, we popped in unannounced for a refreshing mid-run drink, then the following week Rob's mum made sure that she had cool glasses of lemonade ready and waiting for us when we got there. And then, one week, it was a bit cold, so she put the kettle on instead - and of course you can't exactly down a cuppa and get back on your way, can you? So we all made ourselves comfy in the lounge, and Rob put on the TV, and fairly soon we realised that it was too late to make it back to school before the end of the lesson, so Rob's dad had to give us a lift back in his car.
Fairly soon, the weekly ritual was thus: Change into games kit, run out of school gates, cross road to where Rob's dad was waiting in his car, jump in, be ferried round to Rob's where his mum would have mugs of tea and homebaked cakes waiting, watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, try and fail to steal Rob's secret diary, pile back into the car and be dropped around the corner from school so that we could run the last 100m and try to look slightly out of breath.
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| I believe it was also on one of these afternoons that I was introduced to the 'Clumsy Stormtrooper' for the first time, thanks to Widescreen VHS... |
With zero activity at University either, and a sedentary job for most of my twenties, it's hardly surprising that by the time I hit 30 I was the fattest and unfittest I'd ever been - so thank goodness for my sister Helen who is always pushing herself to do new, crazy things, and her encouraging me to put on some clothes which weren't made of denim and join up to the Bupa 10K with her in 2011. I have no idea how I even managed that, except that I'm obnoxiously competitive and won't be beaten at anything, so four 10k races later, it's now time for the ultimate challenge. (Well, apart from the Tough Mudder, but I'm a giant wuss so you won't catch me doing that, even if yesterday's run in ankle deep mud was pretty good training.)
There's actually a quite serious motive for all this running - every year since 2011 I've raised money for the Cure Parkinson's Trust, and I explained my motivation for this last time I started begging for sponsorship. Sadly the main reason I felt so strongly about this charity is no longer with us - although, this very fact is perhaps more motivating than ever, having witnessed first-hand the struggle, the pain and the discomfort of living with Parkinson's, the stoicism in the face of 'not wanting to be a burden' and the sad, inevitable accident which brought an end to a fine life which had brought inspiration to many.
Whenever I'm out running, and I feel like stopping, I need only consider what it means to have control of my limbs, to be able to run at all, to not feel trapped in a body which won't do what I ask of it - to not sit through hours of endless pain because it's too difficult to get up and go to the doctor.
Suddenly pushing on to that next mile marker doesn't seem so hard.
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