Cool Running Ramblings : Issue 2
Walking the walk (when I should be running the run)
Having signed up to do the Brighton Marathon on a bit of a whim after overhearing a conversation about it at work I came home, armed with a gruelling training program downloaded from the internet wondering what I’d done with my running shoes. After a bit of rummaging, a once rather professional looking pair of Asics bought for the 1999 London marathon (but never actually used for it, obviously) were retrieved from the depths of the wardrobe dusted off and tried out for size. Good old trainers, the fat boy’s friend! No matter that many years of pie and pint consumption have transformed the fine, athletic form of my youth into today’s somewhat tubbier version, I still possess the same sized feet I had when I was sixteen. The Asics were a perfect fit, so that was one less avenue of procrastination open to me and the first “pre-training” run was looking ominously nearer.
Having given up smoking some six years ago I was feeling confident that my time had come and finally my dreams of Marathon glory could be realised. That said, my definition of “marathon glory”, much like my youthful form, looks a great deal different today than it did back in the nineties. I’ve gone from wanting to finish in the top ten to a far more realistic dream of just wanting to finish! So, after a couple of puffs on my inhaler and with the Stone Roses on my MP3 I left the house and set off on a three mile jaunt down to the seaside, along the front and back home past my local pub. I’d done this run several times before last year when I was on a mission not to be the fattest in the pool on a holiday with my other half’s family. I’d managed to get the run down to under twenty minutes after running it about three times a week on the way to achieving my not being the fattest target. Well at least I would have achieved my target if I’d managed to coax my daughter’s 76 year old grand father into the pool. Hey ho, I wasn’t massively fatter than my 50 year old brother in law, so I came close to “living the dream”.
But that last bout of running madness was just over a year ago and the time off had taken its toll. My first run back and it was quickly apparent that I’d lost whatever limited level of fitness I’d previously achieved. I only made it half way round before I had to stop for a bit of a walk, and that wasn’t the only “bit of a walk” I had to do before arriving puffing and wheezing back at my front door about 25 minutes after I’d left. Disappointed but not deterred I realised that this marathon lark was going to be a lot harder than I’d hoped!
