To hell with terror.
The ever-expanding background of world terrorism makes writing about running seem quite facile and irrelevant, but this is a running diary, of sorts, and I can hardly write about my running without at least mentioning the background of world events which impacts my efforts, even at a remove of half the globe.
I'd worked a night shift, and returned home and had just fallen asleep at about the time of the most recent attack. I awoke some hours later to find a message on my phone from #1 son Chris in London saying he and his wife Tash, whilst out on the town that evening, were safe. Eh? What's all this then? I quickly check the news which reveals the latest round of horror on the streets. Increasingly it seems we have to tick off areas we know and have been in that have been subject to the horror of terrorism. The Borough Markets is an area we have visited more than once during our times in London, and loved. In my case it has also the connection of being the area where my mother was born and lived in her youth; just around the corner, as it happens, from where the attack took place. With a son and daughter-in-law now living in London, these events cut deeper than some others, and it was with a sense of continuing disbelief that we followed the events on the news services.
As evidenced by the resolve of Londoners and Britons in general, I felt compelled to still live my life as normally as possible, whilst still acknowledging the turmoil and paying respect to those injured and killed. With that in mind, I was determined to complete my scheduled long run.
In fact, a strange dream just prior to waking had also strengthened my resolve to run today, though it was a somewhat bizarre semi-lucid affair involving Jimmy Carter as an octogenarian (he's 92 as I write this). My dream involved a fitness campaign in the U.S. when Jimmy was 80 years old, which showed the ex-president jogging along a country road. He stops and speaks to the camera, saying 'I'm 80 years old and can run non-stop for 80 minutes. Get active and you too can live a long and fulfilling life' before smiling and running off again. I don't know if Carter was still running in his 80s or not, but I think I know the genesis of this dream which involves two recent conversations I've had and which were perhaps the catalyst for the nocturnal subconscious creativity.
The first was a discussion with a work colleague in which I mentioned that in the recent Sydney half marathon I had finished just outside the top half of the overall field, but a long way down in my age division (55-59), meaning the race clearly had a lot of very good, older runners. I had said how I've long declared that I want to still be running in my 80s, and if the race results indicated anything, it was that the 80+ age categories will become very, very interesting by the time I get there (still a long way off, I hasten to add).
The other conversation was with my mate Steve, in which we had agreed that for average blokes such as ourselves, the best legacy we can leave in this world is to simply lead by example and hope we can encourage others to improve their lot in life by getting on with it and not treating it as if it was never going to end.
It was this, I suppose, that led to the Jimmy Carter dream, although I'm unsure why it was Carter that had the lead role, other than perhaps the fact that he took up running later in life and perhaps tried to simply set a goal that others might like to follow. I'm not really sure; dreams are often weird things, but it did at least have me leaping (figuratively) out of bed determined to complete my long run today. Then I read the news of the attacks in London and this only deepened my resolve to get on with it and complete my run.
I do, though it may seem odd from this side of the planet, feel a deep empathy with London's resilience to such attacks. This has a lot to do with my mother who suffered terribly through the London Blitz of World War 2. Bad enough as the Blitz was, she was also a member of the Women's Royal Navy Reserve and was often stationed on bridges across the Thames at night, her job being to spot falling bombs that landed in the river and failed to explode. Of this role she never spoke, and we only learned years after her death from my father what her job had actually been. To stand on an exposed bridge at night as the Luftwaffe rained down thousands of bombs on the city of your birth, given the specific task of spotting and mapping bombs that failed to explode must have been a truly terrifying ordeal. She was a true Cockney however, born literally within earshot of 'Bow Bells', the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church at Cheapside just one mile away from her home nearby to Borough Station. Whether it was this that gave her stoicism, courage and a fatalistic pragmatism in the face of overwhelming odds I'm not sure, but I like to think at least a little of its positive qualities rubbed off on me, though I've of course not been tested to anything like the degree she and so many others have been.
But yes, I believe I do understand something of the resolve of Londoners, and perhaps this helped me power through my long run this afternoon. Whilst it will have had no impact on the terrorists or the wider world of terrorism, I like to think it helps me to deal with the current state of the world, and perhaps, by extension, help others, too. It certainly can't hurt.
So, 23 kilometres were completed at a decent pace, and in defiance of crazy, mixed up and sadly violent world affairs. In fact, the run went so well that I'm prepared to say after my previous tough hill climbing tempo run and today's long 'un that I've leapt to a new level of fitness. That this should happen in the first week of my four month campaign is greatly encouraging.
Of the actual events in London last night I've little to say that hasn't been better said by others. All I can do is run on with ever greater resolve to lead my life in a way the terrorists are attempting to diminish. Well, to hell with them. I'm running on, regardless. If my mother can stand on a bridge at night for nights on end as bombs fall relentlessly around her, threatening to snuff out her life at any moment, then the very least I can do is keep on running. It's not much, but it's something, and if the goal of terrorists is to disrupt our everyday life, then to carry on is victory.
High June
