Sometimes people ask me what I think about when I’m running. Well, tonight I was thinking about ‘serious runners’ who can’t hide their disdain for… people like me. People like me will never win a race, will never even know what it feels like to try to win a race. Will never run a marathon in under four and a half hours.
Many serious competitive runners are helpful and supportive towards the new runner. But others feel threatened and irritated by the presence of this large rump attaching itself to their sport, devaluing the events they want to keep for themselves. How vexatious we are.
The trouble with people like us is that we’ve not paid our dues. We are the people who were having fun while they were stopping behind after school to spend extra time on the track. Giving up their Saturdays to run cross-countries. At university, they were the supple-bodied platoon of warriors, skin glowing with health, crowding dutifully onto minibuses outside the student union on Wednesday afternoons, while the rest of us were getting drunk and smoking dope and trying to get laid.
Then years later, just when they least expect it, along come all these fat blokes, and women who’ve escaped from Weightwatchers, crowing triumphantly because they managed to waddle for 30 minutes without having a coronary. Asking dumb questions about shoes and petroleum jelly and training schedules. Huh!
If the internet forums are anything to go by, it seems to be the London Marathon that induces the severest apoplexy. Why do all these losers bother? Depriving real runners of places just so that they can raise money for charity and have their six hours of fame? Shouldn’t be allowed. Kidding themselves they can run a marathon. Call that running?
It reminded me of an incident in last year’s Theale 10K. It was a 10K and a 5K combined, with the 5K runners starting halfway through the 10K race. I was with a group of other 40-somethings, puffing our way along a narrow track on the edge of a field, when two or three gazelle-like 5K runners, none of them older than 18, pushed past us, tutting and grumbling under their breath about us being in their way. “Hey watch it”, I shouted at these kids, “We’re the future of this sport, y’know”.
And that’s what they fail to see. It’s the recreational runners, the dreaded ‘jogger’, that sustains and breathes new life into their sport. Without us, the London Marathon wouldn’t be what it is. The crowds wouldn’t be there, the five or six hours of TV coverage wouldn’t be there, the sponsors wouldn’t be so keen. Among the watching millions, countless porky couch potatoes whisper to themselves “next year I’m going to run the marathon”, and opt to change their lives forever. The sour-faced serious runners don’t see this because there’s not a lot you can see when your head is stuck that far up your own backside.
During today’s run, I wasn’t thinking so much about these people, as trying to think of a word to describe them. My best effort (with acknowledgement to JK Rowling) was smuggles. Why? Partly because they’re so damn smug, and partly because they seem to inhabit another universe from the rest of us. A poker-faced breed, drained of fun. Anything they ever knew about the joy of running, and the pleasure of self-deprecation, was lost years ago on the side of some misty Welsh mountain as they strained to hang onto the heels of the race leader.
Ah, that’s better. I needed that. Just as I needed the six miles I put in late this afternoon. This was much better than yesterday. It was one of those runs that I started without knowing where or when it would end. I set off, and stopped when I decided it was time to stop. It felt great. Absolutely great.
Sorry about that, smuggles…
