Wednesday December 12, 2007
The tiredness of the long-distance runner
Many people who know me as a journalist are surprised when they hear I’m also a bit of a runner. It’s not something I did much in my 20s, but when I was in my teens I ran the London Marathon in four hours or so – and now I’ve decided I miss that sense of enjoying something that isn’t related to food or booze. So over the past few months I’ve bought some running shoes and headed back out to pound the streets.
On the plus side, I’ve run a 10K (in 44:14 – woo!) and I’m now training for a 10-mile race. Broadly I feel lighter and fitter and able to drink beer and eat cheese guilt-free.
On the minus side, I’m not 18 any more, which presents the following problems:
• The first thing I feel in the morning is pain, and a crushing desire to go back to sleep. I can only describe it as like having a hangover in the bottom half of your body – not a description I’ve seen in Runner’s World magazine, which seems to be written for people who never have hangovers in their lives.
Happily, being a freelance, I usually respond by closing my eyes.
• When I stand up in the morning, my ankles make a clicking noise. I click all the way to the bathroom and click all the way back. My girlfriend thinks I am an alien.
• The chafing. It chafes there, and there, and sometimes even there. Yes, there. This never happened when I was 18. I therefore have a pot of lubricating stuff in the bathroom for the first time in my life.
But all the pain is worth it when you’re running in the driving rain along empty streets – everyone else may be festering on the sofa watching Clarkson, but you’re putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the weather in your face, and feeling good for another few miles. It’s what we were built for, and it makes me feel alive.
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