Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Come on, Colo-Rectal!

As loyal readers will know, my one exercise vice these days is running. I've recently started to get myself back into training after hardly running at all for months, which has been an interesting yet sweaty experience, but I'm in no condition at all to get back to entering any races quite yet unless I want to post times which would be good for, say, an 85-year old veteran woman. Thus it was that I found myself hanging around the start line of the Shakespeare Marathon (and half-marathon) in Stratford-on-Avon earlier today in the capacity of a supporter rather than a participant, seeing off my brother who was foolhardily doing the Shakespeare again after cramping up after 22 miles or so last year and having to spend quarter of an hour lying in a ditch waving at fellow participants to show that no, really, he was fine and there was no need to call a medevac team. He did finish,

It was interesting to be a spectator for once, and having to categorise people for the purpose of selecting good supporter-ish things to yell at them. At mass-participation events like this there are always a fair number of fast lads prowling around the front row before the race wearing club vests and looking as if they're planning on ambling round the course in a quick 2 hours 10 before heading down the pub for a quick jar with Haile, Hendrick and the boys. It's usually quite easy to find ways of demonstrating your support for them - usually their club's name is written on the front of their vest, so you can just read it off and shout "Come on, Bedford!" or "Come on, Serpentine!". Dead easy. The same goes for the slower runners who are in club colours - read the name and holler "Come on, Cardiff!" or whatever. This can get more difficult when you're dealing with those clubs out there which have self-deprecatory names, though - anyone who doesn't realise that they're running with someone from, say, the Stragglers may well get quite offended at a cheerful "Come on, Stragglers!" which they think is aimed at them.

Some clubs foolishly rely on their colours for recognition. This is usually a bad idea as club vests come in all combination of colours (blue with red stripe, green with purple bands, or in the case of my own Serpentine club a rather stylish red with two gold hoops around the chest). There are probably various anoraks out there who can recognise every club in the UK from one brief glimpse of its colours, but I'm certainly not one of them. Unless they're from a really famous club like Thames Hare and Hounds (oldest cross-country club in the world, plain white vest with their emblem on on the front) it's definitely a good idea to put the name there in nice big letters. This also prevents confusion during, say, marathons where some competitors get their names put on their vests to help with support. If you're not careful you can find people thinking you're a member of some club called Barbara or Steve.

The trickiest people to support, though, are the charity runners, most of whom wear tops with the name of the charity they're running for on them. This presents problems. Most charities work against bad things, and standing by the road yelling "Come on, breast cancer!" or "Come on, leukaemia!" or "Come on, child abuse!" is likely to give people the wrong idea and maybe even get you arrested for, well, just being tasteless. I tried to avoid doing this, but when a bunch of guys came by in T-shirts boldly proclaiming themselves to be running for Warwick Colo-Rectal (presumably the unit of that name at Warwick Hospital) I was unable to resist encouraging them with a hearty "Come on, Colo-Rectal!". After all, it's not often you can shout that in public with impunity, especially on the genteel streets of Stratford-upon-Avon.

In the absence of anything else to shout, though, I decided to just fall back to all the things people have shouted at me during races in order to get my own back for all the "Nearly there!"s when the race was about halfway through, and the "Great stuff!"s from days when, well, I just wasn't running well at all and was doing really badly. So to anyone who may have heard "Nearly there!", "Awesome, dude!", "Hey, you're strong! You rock, man!" or "C'mon, last hundred metres - time for that big sprint finish!" approximately five minutes into the Shakespeare Marathon today, I apologise.

Posted by mpk at May 7, 2006 11:34 PM | TrackBack