Running Wild

In 2005 or thereabouts, I took up two forms of exercise, having been a complete couch potato for the previous thirty-odd years. That year, we decided as a family to do the Sawston Fun Run, around 5 miles I think. So I started going for a run down the river to Stourbridge Common and back, on Saturday mornings. To my surprise, I found running short distances (4 miles or less) relatively easy. This may have been partly because I already used to run from my office to the tube station every afternoon, so that I would arrive at Kings Cross sufficiently early for my commuter train back to Cambridge that I could have a quick pint in the awful bar there. Mister Health, that’s me.

Thereafter, we took up the Parkrun, a five kilometre run at nine o’ clock every Saturday morning. Everyone has a barcode which is scanned at the end of the run, and they email you your time an hour or so later. Your barcode is good for whichever run you do. Linda and I have done them in Cambridge, Wimpole, Bradford, Leeds, Keighley, Bognor Regis, Jersey, and Castlewellan in Northern Ireland. Parkruns have had to be suspended for obvious reasons since early 2020, but they will be starting up again soon.

Don’t get me wrong. I am the rankest amateur runner, unlike Linda who has done countless half marathons and has run the Paris marathon. She rose above some difficult circumstances to do the Great North Run several times, and has been Grand Mattress of the Cambridge Hash House Harriers, of which more in a future blog.

I also took up taekwondo. I suppose one might think it a bit rash to take up a martial art in your late forties, but my son Tom who was socially awkward needed a buddy to accompany him. And I never regretted it, even after fracturing a metatarsal during sparring. I liked the community spirit of the class, and I felt that a couple of hours of very vigorous exercise twice a week had a detoxifying effect. I am not a big fan of sparring, as I am rubbish at it and seem to be rather injury-prone.  Also, as my pal Jim Cursiter said once, I am the least competitive person in the world and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.

I found the gradings rather stressful, having previously regarded passing my driving test in 1984 as the final accolade. But as my dad would say, you get used to anything bar hunger or hanging, and the exercise and the camaraderie make it worth the physical and psychological costs.

One thing that I noticed was that running for a few miles was one of the few things other than alcohol which gave me a mental buzz. I still find it stimulating, although I am a lot slower than I was ten years ago. It was pleasant to discover that I actually enjoyed exercise.

                                                                **************************

It also gave me a retrospective anger at the gym teachers at my school who put me off physical activity for decades. I recall once when I was about fourteen years old, we were playing softball and we were in the transition phase when the side fielding goes in to bat and vice versa. I was talking to a couple of fellow-fielders as we made our way to our places when something struck me very hard on the side of the head. I fell in the direction of down, as they used to say on The Goon Show. It turned out, when the various pieces of the world had sorted themselves back into their proper places, that Sooty Armour, the gym teacher, had decided that I wasn’t paying enough attention and that he would wake me up by hurling the ball at my head. Thank heaven we were playing softball and not cricket.

On another occasion, during the annual school sports day, I was lumbering towards the finish of my heat in the half mile, and one of the science teachers observed that the pack were some distance behind me.

‘Look!’ he observed in a tone of frank astonishment, ‘It’s Duffy coming in first. COME ON, DUFFY! KEEP IT UP!’

Sooty Armour turned to him and rather sourly observed, ‘He’s coming in last in the previous heat.’

                                                                *****************************

I was at my fittest when I was fifty-eight years old, six to seven years ago. Linda was commuting to Leeds weekly, and usually had the car. I therefore had to cycle the three miles each way to and from Taekwondo training. I got my personal best in the Parkrun on my fifty-eighth birthday. I knew I was making good time just over half way round, when Alex Zeffert, one of the Hash gang, drew alongside me.

‘Are you timing yourself?’ I asked as we jogged along.

‘Yes. Why.’

‘I have a feeling I am making good time, and I might beat my PB of 27 minutes 37.’

‘Stay with me,’ said Alex, ‘And I will make sure you do.’

Staying with him proved uncomfortably hard work. I felt I had very little strength left as we got to the last 200 metres.

‘We’ll have to do a bit of a sprint finish,’ said Alex.

My heart sank, but I did my best, running the last few yards as hard as I could. When I reached the finish, I was like one of those marathon runners you see on the telly, who has only just managed to do the full distance, lying on the ground with my backside in the air, feeling like I was going to die or be sick or possibly both.

Alex jocularly enquired of the crowd around us, ‘Can anyone do CPR?’

My time was 26 minutes 56. Unknown to me, Alex had decided that not only could he help me beat my PB, he could get me in below 27 minutes. And he did, although at the time I wasn’t exactly effusive in my gratitude.

Another story of Alex Zeffert. One Friday evening, we had been roped in to attend an auction of promises in aid of a local primary school’s PTA funds. Linda, Alex and I were sitting at the same table, arms folded, steadfastly refusing to bid for any of the rather unimpressive lots.

Alex remarked, ‘Do you think Jill has twisted the wrong arms to attend this? At this table the three of us are a Yorkshirewoman, a Scotsman and a Jew.’

Let’s end with a further remark on the Parkrun. My times in more recent years have been of the order of 30 minutes or more. On one occasion, perhaps an anniversary of the event, some people were running in fancy dress. I was in the last half kilometre and again a Hash colleague ran up alongside me. I pointed to a chap twenty yards ahead, who was dressed in a long robe and carrying a five-foot staff.

‘Isn’t it humiliating,’ I remarked, ‘to be coming in behind the bloke dressed as Gandalf?’

Our Tom finishing a blooming sight ahead of me in the Parkrun