Is there any point continuing with this running stuff?
As I went out for my stuttering 5 mile run along the canal this morning, I found myself thinking about last night, when I’d paid my first visit to the running club. I did enjoy it at the time, and felt quite excited that I’d made this big step, but I was slightly horrified at this sight of a hundred people plodding miserably round the track. It reminded me of that scene in Midnight Express when all the asylum prisoners are shuffling round and round in a small circle, and our hero has to force himself to walk in the opposite direction to stay sane. Or a hamster on a treadmill, just vacantly pedalling like mad, going nowhere.
Isn’t that a bit like the sort of running we do at my end of the field? What’s the point of it all? I could have an extra hour in bed each morning. I could stop pretending that I’m not an overweight, middle-aged bloke who should be tending his purple sprouting broccoli and repainting that back bedroom yet again and calculating my pension (if I had any), in readiness for those shadowy years waiting just up ahead. Useful stuff.
Instead, I pull the wool over everyone’s eyes — and particularly my own — by spinning out this pretence. Fooling myself that I’m some kind of born-again athlete. Something admirable? No. The more I think about it, the more I think this is all a waste of time. Running, and writing about running. I think it’s time I just got back to doing what I do best: nothing very much.
And how ironic that it took my first visit to a running club to come to this realisation. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone at all. I might have stretched the self-delusion all the way to Copenhagen and beyond.
Should I continue the Running Commentary? Perhaps I could just write about other stuff instead?
I have some thinking to do here. I may not be back here for a while, but I will return to let you know what’s going on when I get the chance.
How sad this is.
