Well, it may be “easy to start”, but that first mile is still tough. It’s all about incongruity really: a good yardstick of fitness. It seems that the fitter you are, the more sort of natural you feel when you’re running round the streets. Adonis-like youths with rippling biceps stand aside in silent admiration. Pouting, sighing housewives ogle you as you pass. Gangs of hair-tearing schoolgirls scream their phone numbers at you in discordant desperation.
Conversely, when you’re feeling tubby and out of condition, you’re devastatingly out of place as you trudge along. Small children burst into spontaneous floods of tears as you come near. Porcine schoolboys in Chelsea shirts oink and squeal with derision. Farmers with bushy sideburns drive their rusty, untaxed jalopies through muddy puddles, trying to drown you into submission. Old ladies beat you round the head with their knobbly walking sticks, spraying you with toothless blasphemies for good measure.
An outcast in your own land.
Today I existed largely in that second category. Largely. Good choice of word. Yet I still got through my 3½ miles.
For the rest of the day I’ve felt nothing less than regal. First time in six days.
