Clash magazine’s Si Hawkins explains why he’s surprised he’s running…
I’ve had a bit of a downer about running ever since secondary school. I always seemed to be puffing and wheezing at the back of the field during cross-country, so much so that our PE teacher assumed I was lazing about and treated me with the sort of scorn that only PE teachers can truly master. I wasn’t even fat then. That came later.
It turned out that I had bronchitus or asthma or something breathing-related that was stopping the old windpipes working properly so I think I managed to bodyswerve long-distance runs for the rest of my schooldays, which was handy. Not that I hated sport. Football I thoroughly enjoyed, with its short sharp bursts and obvious goal to aim for: an actual goal, with a net and everything. That was running with a purpose.
In the years since then I’ve carried on with the kickabouts but every time my mate Mike suggested I join him on his morning run I’d laugh and remind him that I only ever ran when (a) chasing a ball, (b) chasing a train, (c) I’d drunk too much to care and was absolutely desperate for a wee and a toasted sandwich.
Early this year, however, during those weird few weeks of mass hysteria where we’re all convinced we’ll be a different, more positive person from then on, I signed up to do a 10K. One of my loved-ones, not a particularly enthusiastic runner, had done it the year before and clearly gained a lot from it. Well, actually she’d lost a few stone, which was also quite an attractive proposition – all that training! By the summer I’d be lean, mean… maybe not mean, given that it’s a charity run, but lean would be absolutely excellent.
Then of course the months rolled by and, rather than make an early start to my training, I ate and drank with the freedom of a man who knew he’d be forced to put in some intensive fitness work at some point in the still quite distant future. Come May though and here I am, still trying to burn it off, struggling with some odd virus I picked up due to the mother of all root-canal operations the other day (all those sweets, all that chocolate) and generally watching the 30th of May – 10K run-day – tick ever closer.
Still, it’s for a good cause – a great cause in fact, and not just because (unlike the good people I’m running with, who have chosen a charity that has a penguin as its mascot and therefore feel obliged to run as one) I get to wear a nice orange bib.
I’d imagine there are a lot of young chaps currently struggling with cross-country runs, or whatever their own private hell may be, getting scornful looks from PE teachers, or classmates, or girls, and who already feel that in the marathon of life they’re lagging way behind. It’s a conviction that can take some shifting as the years roll by, and the right approach isn’t always forthcoming. Some of us need a supportive hand on the shoulder, not a kick up the arse.
That’s where CALM comes in.
If you fancy sponsoring my wheeze-fest then visit: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SiSaysRelax
