I’ve been reading Runners World magazine, and reflecting on how mad people are.
I’m ambivalent towards this magazine. I confess that I devour it, though part of its compelling appeal is that it reminds me that not everyone is like me. Running makes me happy, but others are surprisingly full of anxiety and resentment. One letter-writer bemoans that “the reality of healthy self-propulsion” (I think he means running) through the countryside is being spoiled by the “all-pervading smell of industrial perfume overpowering the sweet autumnal smells”. He’s referring to deodorants.
And I’m always shocked by the amount of harrassment that runners say they get from pedestrians and car drivers. I can recall only a couple of minor incidents. A schoolkid threw an egg sandwich at me once. (Or was it chicken? Or cheese? I remember observing that it was a missile with an unusually high protein content.) And another time, someone shouted “Oy, you’re too fat to run”. I’d actually imagined someone shouting this at some point, and had an answer ready: “That’s like saying you’re too hungry to eat”. It takes a bit of pondering, a tactic that paid off on this occasion.
I’d forgotten about this latter incident until a recent visit to Charlotte Dutch’s running blog, when she mentioned some kids giggling at her race-walking technique. It’s a terrible confession but… well, race-walking does tend to be one of the comic highlights of the Olympics, doesn’t it? A 13 year old kid would have to be a bit weird not to have shouted something, let’s be honest.
I’ve created disappointingly few waves of outrage in my local community. Perhaps people mistake my running style for someone just out for a leisurely stroll, and think nothing more of it.
Back to Runners World magazine. One perplexing item in this month’s issue was a piece about tapering. This is what it says about a final preparatory session for a half marathon:
Run one mile at 10K race pace and recover with four minutes of jogging. Then run 1200m at 10K race pace with a three minute recovery jog. Follow with 800m at 10K pace and another three minute recovery jog. Finish with 2 x 400m, running each 400m about eight to ten seconds faster than you ran all the other laps. Jog one lap to recover between.
I really don’t know how people go about following this sort of advice. Do they write it on their arm? Copy it into a notebook and keep it in their back pocket? How else would you remember such convoluted instructions?
Sometimes it’s good to be a slowbie. Life is less complicated.
