The Surliness of the Short Distance Runner

The Crow’s Nest, a column by Russ Litten

Current Affairs

I notice with weary resignation that the various annual extortions to new year galvanisation have begun.

In the spirit of joining in begrudgingly, I have recently resumed my intermittent habit of running around my local park of a morning.

Well, I say "running", it's probably more accurately described as staggering forwards like a dray horse that's just been hit by a tranquilliser dart, alternated with short bursts of good old fashioned walking.

I became a convert to al-fresco running in public, having had a short burst of gym membership some years ago courtesy of an orange-faced lady who offered me a six-week trial period under the guise of an extended sun bed session.

Then she suggested registering me as a pensioner. She seemed incapable of doing anything by the book.

"I'll do you a deal" she urged, “Tell you what, I’ll put you down as a senior citizen sun bed."

The fact that I was neither a senior citizen or had any intention of using the sun bed was immaterial. All that mattered was that she got my name on the dotted line.

After a while I got disenchanted with the gym. For a start, I wasn't really getting the full advantage of all the amenities. All I wanted to do was run - I had no interest in any of the other machinery in there, most of which seemed to be primarily designed to pelt you about with various degrees of discomfort.

And then there was the running itself. Whoever decided to put up a bank of televisions in front of the treadmills wants banishing from society. And whoever decided to then tune all those televisions into Jeremy Kyle/Big Brother/Endless Pop Videos of Beyonce needs to accompany them into the sunset.

It's bad enough having a searing pain in the back of your calves, but in each eyeball and both ears as well? It’s like having your freshly ripped wounds sprayed with industrial-strength salt from a council road gritter. It makes an uncomfortable experience completely unbearable.

And then there's the treadmill itself. After a bit I realised it was entirely unsuitable for my needs. When you use a treadmill, you are not actually running. You are merely jumping up and down, usually in time to some heave-inducing Euro-pop.

I was paying twenty quid a month to jump up and down in front of a Little Mix video. Pointless. It was turning my knees to mush and my mind to water.

Added to this are the other people who use gyms. For a start, there was usually some class going on behind me, more often than not a gang of divorcees on bikes being commandeered by some demented day-glo lycra-clad instructor screaming at them to "go to the limit" and "feel the burn".

After twenty minutes of this I started having fantasies of burning his pert bottom with a blowtorch, but this would only probably make him scream louder and longer.

As well as the relentlessly demented staff, the other punters were either ridiculously aloof or alarmingly over familiar.

One old fellow seemed to attach himself to me like a limpet, hovering at my shoulder in the changing room as I bent over to put my strides on, following me into the showers, lurking at my locker - everywhere I turned he was there, engaged in some rambling anecdote about his recent heart attack and various hospital visits and dietary requirements.

At the end of my six-week trial period, I felt I knew every inch of his colon intimately. So I sacked the gym off and started lumbering round the park.

It's free, it's convenient, and it's got no MTV tellies or surviving heart attack victims with verbal diarrhoea.

I don't know if it's doing me any more physical good. But it's certainly been more entertaining.

‘I much prefer park runs to running on a treadmill; it allows you to run away from people’

For a start, parks are crucibles of human oddity, especially first thing in a morning. The added attraction with the park is that you are not on a treadmill and can therefore run away from them.

There are two fellows in particular who intrigue me. I don't know if they are brothers or have made a conscious effort to dress and look the same, but they both look like a cross between Keith Lemon and the fat one out of Junior Senior.

They have matching yellow moustaches and black baseball caps and one of them drags a shopping trolley around. Most mornings I see them, they are either rooting through the bins or sat at opposite ends of one of the wooden benches, pointedly ignoring each other.

I usually give them a cheery nod as I stagger past, but am usually met with the blank impervious gaze of a basilisk. I try to do three or four circuits of the park before admitting defeat.

What I like about it most is the mental peace. After a bit, your mind goes blank and then all sorts of mad stuff starts drifting into the empty spaces that the repetition of running seems to create.

I usually start off by listening to music in my head (I don’t like earplugs); usually Kraftwerk or something equally machine-like and repetitive. Then I drift off into various inner landscapes as I go round and round.

Occasionally I come across something intriguing. This morning I kicked aside something in my path, stopped to examine it – an elaborately bundled together collection of sticks and three miniature whisky bottles stuffed with leaves and grass and bits of mud.

It was like an alcoholic version of The Blair Witch Project. I have no idea what it means, but I have now convinced myself I have evoked the demon of the park and will be chased round by an invisible banshee every morning from now on.

This might actually be a good thing. It might make me run faster.