Humble pie fuel for middle-aged running convert

BY LINLEY BONIFACE

OPINION: Up until last year, I failed to see the attraction of running. Let me be absolutely clear about this: I failed to see the attraction of running in the same way that I failed to see the attraction of dining off barbecued roadkill, learning Elvish, racing ferrets, or playing two recorders simultaneously in both nostrils.

I have always found running to be marginally less fun than waterboarding. And after years of staggering along muddy school cross-country tracks waiting for my lungs to explode like a pair of birthday pinatas, I decided running was something I would do in future only when being pursued by a serial killer.

In addition to disliking running, I didn't much like runners. I was repelled by their peculiar chicken-drumstick legs, annoyed by their insistence on using pointlessly technical words such as "hydration" to describe what the rest of us are perfectly happy to refer to as "water", and maddened by their belief that running is such a sanctified activity that everything on the road – including ambulances and fire trucks – should give way to them.

Under the circumstances, it seemed more likely that I would be abducted by aliens than become a late convert to the joys of running. And yet, this was exactly what happened. One minute, I was ambling contentedly along the road, wondering how long it would be before I reached the next chocolate retailer; the next, I had broken out into a trot so ungainly that my dog dropped to her haunches and began barking at me in fright.

For the first few weeks, I was so terrified of being outed as a runner that I ran in a raincoat, jeans and a pair of walking boots. I ran on remote, inaccessible, overgrown bush tracks frequented only by flashers and firewood thieves, and slowed to a saunter whenever anyone came near.

It seemed an odd, unseemly and slightly shameful activity to be taking up in middle age, like shoplifting lipsticks or smoking behind the bike sheds, but I persevered because after each run I was suffused with a curious feeling of peace. Perhaps this is the runners' high that everyone talks about. If that's the case, it's a term that short-changes the real feeling: when you get older, you realise that peace is rarer, and more fragile, than elation.

As my fitness improved – and amazingly, within a matter of months I was able to run for as long as 10 seconds without feeling in urgent need of a defibrillator – I began running in areas habited by people.

Running with a dog proved to be the perfect cover for being unfeasibly slow. Whenever I felt my heart was about to burst out of my ribcage, I would stop, sigh, showily retrieve a distinctive blue plastic poo bag from my back pocket, and rummage behind my baffled terrier for fictitious dog poo. I pulled this stunt so often that anyone following our progress on a typical run would have assumed my dog had the digestive system of a camel.

I did no exercise whatsoever over the winter – the colder months I reserve for eating cake – but started running again in October.

Progress was slow, and in January runners passing me by flashed me the kind of knowing, good-on-you-for-hauling-yourself-off- the-sofa-at-last smile that plainly suggested they believed I was out on my first jog after making running my New Year resolution. Other runners ate protein bars; I ate humble pie.

Runners, it seems, are everywhere. At weekday lunchtimes, Wellington's Oriental Pde is crammed with vast, seething packs of runners, whose body types range from gazelle to panda.

There is something strangely satisfying about being part of this group, which may have something to do with the shared pain: perhaps you'd get the same cosy sense of community in an acupuncture clinic, or an S&M bondage den.

Much mystical blather is spoken about running, and the astonishing thing is that at least half of it is true. While I still don't have a runner's body – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have the body of several runners, sandwiched together with lard – my best days are the days when I spend half an hour running through the bush, with the sun on my face and no voice but my own in my head.

In fact, I'm off for a run right now. Right after I get some hydration.

- © Fairfax NZ News