Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Exer-what?

For some time I've been peering at my slowly-growing midriff and thinking that I should really do something about that. Sometime. When there's nothing else of interest happening. When the stars are right. When I've managed to acquire a pair of shoes suitable for exercising in.

Eventually I ran out of excuses. But what sort of exercise could I do? Not having a car makes it difficult to head off to the mountains for the weekend as I did when I was younger. Most gyms are full of scary machinery and keen young types clutching bottles of Evian who would look with mocking disdain at my love-handles and think I was just some sad nerd who was there to ogle their firm, pert, toned bodies. Team sports take far too much organisation and anyway, I was the geeky kid at school who always got picked last for soccer. What I can do, though (back to not having a car again) is walk. I can walk and walk until my feet fall off. So, I reasoned, I could walk, only faster. I know! Let's call it "running!"

And so it came to pass that I made the decision to Take Up Running. I could have said I was taking up jogging instead, but Taking Up Running sounds a lot more serious. It seemed like the difference between erotica and porn. "I'm going out for a run" implies "Look! I am fit and healthy, gazelle-like in my sprightly step! I am going to run 25 miles in half an hour!". "I'm going for a jog", however, signifies exactly what I would be doing - puffing breathlessly and desperately around the streets of Surbiton. Running, therefore, it had to be.

At that moment I became - tada! A Runner. An Athlete. A Sportsman. And much better I felt already. I could feel the excess pounds falling away, my calves tightening and toning and returning to the days in my early twenties when random women on trains would stop me and say "Excuse me, but you've got fantastic legs". I learned about VO2max and training plans, about glycogen and lactic acid concentrations, about mitochondria and pronation and carbo-loading. After no time at all I felt fitter than I had in ages. Being a runner was great!

After a few weeks of this I suddenly realised that something a runner had to do was actually go for a run every so often, which came as a shock. I have to admit I'd been wondering why my heart-rate monitor hadn't been showing that I was getting into the 80%-of-max-effort zone and why my middle seemed to be growing slightly rather than shrinking. The latter definitely didn't look like it was due to extra muscle being laid down either, so I guessed that there wasn't anything else for it. Off I went to the shops to buy a pair of running shoes, and bang went my plan to "be careful not to overtrain at the beginning".

Running shoes are important things. Normal trainers just aren't suitable for the continual pounding the feet take when running, especially on tarmac, and what are broadly called "sports shops" in Britain are generally outlets for selling trainers and replica football strips. Running in normal trainers is, it is said with finger-wagging seriousness, a recipe for injury and the right shoes can make the difference between enjoying running and not. If you want running shoes, the cognoscenti say, the only place to go is a proper running shop. There wasn't one of those in Surbiton, though. There wasn't one in Kingston either, so I did what I usually do under these circumstances and went to John Lewis - they sold everything else, so why not running shoes? A couple of staff in the sports section were runners, and one of them gave me some helpful advice and sold me a pair of Asics 1090 shoes. I felt like rather a fraud buying running shoes having not run properly since school and somewhat inferior buying them surrounded by the healthy, trendy young things of Kingston, especially when jogging up and down the shop to see how well the shiny white shoes suited me. I left the shop with them wrapped in discreet packaging and guiltily snuck them home, fearful that people fitter than me would see the box and publicly mock me for presuming to think that I, of all people, could take exercise. Exercise, after all, was only for fit people.

After getting them home I shamelessly put my new shorts and my new shoes on, slung my flat keys around my neck so I wouldn't lose them, stuffed my asthma inhaler in a pocket and nervously stepped out of the front door fully prepared to make a fool of myself in public.

To be continued...

Posted by mpk at September 9, 2004 7:06 PM | TrackBack