Twenty Six Times-Tables

I once heard it said that entering running races was the most expensive way to buy four safety pins at a time. We must have enough to alter the magnetic routes followed by birds above our house. I have no idea where most of them are; one day, I will put my hand in a bag, only to shred my paw on a pile of pins. And in 2015, my marathon mind had been shredded when I missed a Good for Age time by three seconds. My mile splits, the miles-per-minute ratio over a race, went ever so slightly but crucially wrong; by what became known as ‘three bloody seconds.’

And what is ‘Good For Age’? It sounds like an insult. It sounds like your memory, looks, intelligence -insert any quality that society deems to deteriorate as you get older- aren’t what they were. Well, some of the most amazing achievements in running are made by runners who have experience that means they do not give up easily, or they can fall back on the more difficult events of life as a crutch for the suffering they have found themselves in after miles of dreadful weather or a hurt foot. The young ‘uns can have this experience, too; but middle age tends to bring its benefits disguised as the big stuff. Think Nicky Spinks, and you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t yet heard about Nicky Spinks’ staggering achievements, run her name through a search engine. You will be inspired.

A Good For Age time would come to symbolise a lot to me. It was the running world acknowledgement of a hard fought for result that is, well, actually… good. It would mean I could enter the London Marathon without the hoo-har of the lottery of the ballot. And creating my plan A to achieve this was to be the most mathematically focused I would be about a sporting outcome since 1984, when I worked out every possible score of the last five matches of the season that might affect Newcastle United’s promotion.

But if maths and a bit of educated guesswork were going to be my running companions, then I was clearly going to mess up. How did I know? Because a runner colleague at work, who also happens to be a Maths teacher and used to be an engineer in the County Durham mines, had the same problem: neither of us could complete the apparently simple task of adding two times together. We both found that, once you’re a bit knackered, so is your ability to add up.

So, I switched to plan B. Plan B was easier on my sums, but was going to be across the board tougher. It went like this: get a lot faster, a lot stronger, across every race distance, and not have to worry about the sums.

I came up with Plan B in our warm, cosy, dry living room. Outside was none of those things. But it never stopped me. I developed an almost Bear Grylls-esque attitude to weather. It was never too cold. It was never too wet (apart from the day I forgot to rub Vaseline on the inside of my thighs and I came home with my legs looking like props from Night of the Living Dead). It was never too hot (apart from the day I went out after our wedding anniversary, in the blazing afternoon sun, and arrived home shivering with heat stroke). I even tried to learn my seven minute-twenty seconds times-tables, so I could hit the split times needed to flatten my target time. But, like my other times tables, I couldn’t do them after x12.

Everything went well. Unusually well. Although I hurt my calf at the end of January, I ran an early year hilly marathon and didn’t get disastrously injured. It was exhilarating, and you can read about the star-crossed, Brian Cox narrated* story elsewhere on RunnerVT^1­. The speed training meant I ran 10k and half-marathon races faster than I had ever ran them before. I joined a new club, the excellent Tyne Bridge Harriers. I suffered like a mathematically challenged hound, as the calm and supportive coaches shouted out the end of repetitions, completed at a pace I didn’t even know I could run at. And it all added up to a little bloke who, could run a bit faster, for a lot longer, than he had ever done before.

Finally, after tedious weeks of trying to remember where I was up to in my seven minute-twenty seconds times-tables, I could do the sums. I gave myself a mental sticker for my efforts. This was the most unexpected side effect of fitness like never before: I could add times together when my legs and head would have previously switched into mush-mode.

But mush-mode arrived early; six weeks from the race, eight miles into a long run, my right calf went bang. I hobbled for another mile before ‘phoning for assistance. I don’t usually take my phone, so I was lucky. Frustratingly, this meant that for the next six weeks, my weekly average mileage was ten miles. And that included a week when I managed twenty-seven, which still wasn’t enough. My new found maths skills weren’t needed to tell me I had missed over a hundred miles of training. On top of this, the cold I had contracted was, at best, disgusting.

Lining up at the start of the Yorkshire Marathon, with a slimy nose and temperamental leg, I had none of the focus I had earlier in the year. However, I had also removed the pressure I had placed on myself. I felt fresh; relaxed. After a few miles, a runner from Doncaster started chatting, and even though we were a few seconds per mile faster than my plan, it didn’t matter. At eighteen miles, I saw one of the lads from our club who was helping out, and his cheery shout out gave me a boost; I was soon on my own, and even though I expected my energy levels to dip and my huffy legs to pop, neither did. When my stiffening quads finally started to burn at twenty-three miles, it didn’t matter, because I could work out how many minutes of this self-inflicted ache I had left to put up with, and somehow, I wasn’t really slowing down. The fact that I could work out the sums made me feel like the entirely imaginary, parallel universe offspring of Pheidippides and Carol Vorderman.

And that was that. I crossed the line over four minutes faster than the year before. My legs immediately ceased to function as legs, refusing point blank to bend. The gunk from my nose that had found its way onto my running top was, apparently, not alluring. And when I looked in my wallet to see if we had enough cash for a pasty, I simply had no idea if the round metal things in there were enough.

Yup. Good for Age. And I’m already planning next year. Right, Tom needs help with his thirteen times-table. Hang on… don’t they just go up to twelve?

https://runnervt.wordpress.com/2016/04/03/the-time-machine-2/

*I have never met Professor Brian Cox, but Prof, if you would like to make a podcast of my post The Time Traveller, or any of my little rambles, that’s fine by me.

Crumbs, Dad!

He went past me like an ACME rocket in shorts. There was no way I could make up that gap instantly; I was going to have to keep going, and hope he would tire. But this wasn’t a race, although I had just done one; this was Tom after I collected him from the pain of waiting for his sister to finish dancing. Tom was a coiled spring, uncoiling. I was a fairly knackered daddy, and any uncoiling I had done was long since over for today. But I was going to have to catch him before he ran into a shop and knocked stuff over. Again.

It’s important to remember a few things here. Tom doesn’t walk anywhere. He runs very quickly, stops, pants like a rabid hound, asks for a carry, then hares off again as though we had suggested he eat some vegetables. He does this just about everywhere. In town, I hold his hand, partly because I love him, partly because he loves me, and partly so he doesn’t set off a domino chain of senior citizens waiting at the bus stop. He’s a very thoughtful lad, and wouldn’t mean any harm. But he’d be a Tom shaped pile of dust before the bus queue had even landed if I didn’t hold on to him.

Now, while I’m unlikely to ever do a Forest Gump and run for days on end, my, err, running strength, or more precisely, smaller weakness, is that I can run at an OK pace for quite a long time. But I’m not super speedy. Put it like this: Mo Farah’s steady pace is faster than I can run for the last bus, while being chased by tigers with laser powered sharks coming out of their eyes.

I don’t notice the first ten metres of a run because I’m usually still fiddling with my shorts. But it’s in those first ten metres where Tom has me. I catch up, usually because he’s stopped to look at a dead bird or talk to a cat or something. He is also limited in distance because I won’t let him cross the road by himself yet, mainly because he starts walking, then looks the wrong way. We’re working on that. Yet one day, he isn’t going to need to stop. He won’t be bound by the winding roads of our estate. He’s going to look behind, hopefully look both ways when he crosses the road, and the next time I’ll see him, he’ll be leaning against the door frame and muttering about him being the master and me just being a trainee Jedi who can’t run very quickly.

When we get home, he usually wants to play on a video game while I have a shower. Home entertainment. Well, NinBoxSon, I’ve got news for you. It’s not entertaining watching a smallish person try to put a game in a console. It’s terrifying. It’s like every scene from every film in which the main character has to upload, download, transfer data, hack or jam a signal, with the added complication of their eating a piece of jam and toast, thereby wrapping the cable around their own face as they eat it. Tom Cruise would have been captured in seconds in Mission Impossible if he had the complication of crumbs. It is at this crust/cable/console intersection of doom when daddy steps in, sorts it out, and I get a hug. I am useful. I can get the crust out of the console.

The other day in the park, he told another kid that I was a professional runner. I’m not. But in Tom’s eyes, I am. Daddy runs. Quite a lot. And he thinks I’m good at it, even if he’s faster than me over those first metres. It doesn’t matter if it’s because I’m a grown up and know that there’s another mile to our house, and I need to save some energy, whereas Tom thinks, “Whohoo! There’s a cake shop ahead!” It matters because today he’s running faster over the first metres; in a short time, it’ll be me not being able to help with his maths homework. In fact, that might be next week.

One day, he’ll be faster, stronger, more technically adept; I’ll just be his old man. And it’s just as well I know that being his dad is more important than being able to run past a cake shop quickly, being able to remove crumbs from electrical circuitry, even being able to cross the road. It’s being able to teach him all of those things. It’s being Tom’s daddy.

Me, My Selfie and I.

Everyone is a photographer. A camera used to be a luxury, but these days, we’ve all got one in our phones, pockets and price range. There were more photographs of Lizzie and Tom by the age of one than there were of my grandparents in their entire lives.

Pre-race selfies, action shots, finish line lunges… running in an event these days usually has a photograph attached to it. Even the phenomenon of Parkrun, a free timed event for everyone from new runners looking for the big group buzz, to grizzled club runners looking for the big sprint finish, has a photographer. We can all scroll through the shots and share them alongside the photos of cats, or plates of grub captioned with “Nom-nom!” But I’m afraid most of the photographs of me running will put you off your tea.

This isn’t me fishing for compliments. I don’t expect you to reassure me with words of fluffy nonsense. And there is the saving grace that on photographs you can’t hear my race breathing, which sounds like a really thirsty version of Paul Daniels ending a routine. So you’d think I’d be delighted with the clinky piano accompaniment to the silent movie of my running photographs. Err, no.

For a start, experience has taught me that I don’t like sweat pouring into my eyes, so I wear a long tube of fabric called a buff, rolled into a headband. Very practical. It is possible to exude a cool here that makes you look like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, and by default, Keith Richards. This would be good. You might even look like Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. Me? Think Posie from The Flumps.

And now that I’ve joined a running club, I have a running vest. It’s made of lycra. It has a logo to make any runner proud. It’s also white. When I first saw it, I hoped I might look like one of those smouldering Italian guys in films about 50’s New York, kind of like the flashback scenes with Robert Di Niro in The Godfather Part 2. Sitting on the edge of a chair, fervently listening to those around him before he imparts some stoical wisdom, while simultaneously holding the kind of physical presence that meant if you disagree with him, he will be very, very miffed. However, I did not look like strong or wise. I looked like a hankie with arms and a head. To accessorize this film star look, my heart rate monitor strap sometimes looks like I’m wearing a bra.

It’s not that I don’t look the race hardened runner I want to on some photographs. There are the ones where I’m trying really hard, and I’m guzzling the oxygen into my effort strewn face. I like those shots. I’m really going for it, and it says a lot about how hard I try that I don’t even notice anyone with a camera at these times. And the selfies after a big event show I’m proud that I can now do something that not so long ago, I couldn’t.

But there was something else I was starting to like in photographs. When the weight started coming off, I noticed that I look like one of my grandads. I liked that. I liked that a lot. He could fix anything using an L bracket and a tube of Araldite. And I first saw this resemblance on a gorgeous holiday photograph of me and the kids. The problem is, I’m the same height as he was. Because while one of my grandads was quite tall with broad shoulders, the grandad I took after, while very brave and very strong, was also, and there’s no getting away from this, a little bloke.

Some little blokes, via thousands of reps of curls, lifts and presses, look like they’re carrying carpets. I look like I’m carrying heavy shopping. My grandad did carry heavy shopping. My grandma, very nicely, made him carry it. She loved every photograph of everyone in her family, and I think she’s passed that on to me. I might not like every shot of me, but I save them all.

Because one day, someone in my family who doesn’t even exist yet, is going to look through discs or online galleries, and say, “Hang on… this little bloke running looks like that other little bloke from the Second World War. The one who didn’t look like he could do anything, but could do everything. The one who looked like he always carried the shopping for his wife.”

And I hope the camera won’t lie.

Inspirational Posters are Awesome!

Every journey begins with a step. Success comes in cans, not cannots. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Facebook is awash with images anchored to these motivational mindsets, and before we started posting pictures of kittens struggling to get over a step to an awaiting virtual world, schools used the same sort of thing on posters to inspire students. Sports clothing manufacturers tell us that ‘Impossible is Nothing’, and simply to ‘Just do it.’ And next to an image of someone who looks like they’re miles from home with only the moisture from a rock to drink, these messages are a now a multi-billion pound industry. Advertising copywriters are trained very specifically to create these messages. And they seem to work.

But overuse is a dangerous thing, and eventually words on heavy rotation can become clichéd and meaningless. Just watch an interview after a football match for a lesson in pointless, inane drivel. We know the three points are the most important thing and everyone is pulling for the gaffer who has had faith in your ability and the fans have been magnificent all season; please, tell me something inspiring. Or interesting. At least my favourite exponent of inspirational quotations spouted to the point of meaninglessness, David Brent, was funny. Unless you didn’t think so, in which case he hasn’t even got that.

So it’s a difficult line to walk, as acknowledged by the great Morgan Freeman in, I would happily argue, the most inspirational of family entertainment, The Lego Movie. The fact that his character, a little Lego fellow called Vitruvious, acknowledges that what he is going to say ‘sounds like a cat poster’, makes me love it even more. He simply tells the hero, Emmett, an utterly ordinary Lego guy, to Believe. And, eventually, Emmett does. Hang on, there’s something in my eye…

That’s why I like the honesty of Bradley Wiggins and the unpredictable baiting by Jose Mourinho. You may not agree with them, and you may wince at Wiggo’s pre-watershed outbursts, but their soundbites would make great posters. Standing on top of the Tour de France podium, Wiggins opened with “We’re just going to draw the raffle numbers now!” Something to remember. Then there’s Jens Voight, former Tour de France stage winner and all round good egg. When his legs were screaming and the effort was at its worst, he would say, “Shut up, Legs!” This is now splashed across his range of sportswear. Great advice, as it points out that doing something physical isn’t just hard; at times it’s ridiculous that you put yourself through this pain, only to retell it later with the ending, ‘It was brilliant!”

So what advice do I follow? The Brentmeister or another inspirational genius?

I follow the advice of someone who has no qualifications in business, sports coaching, motivational speaking or anything above the average experiences of a six year old… because at the time, she was six. Lizzie.

Planning my drinks, gels and jelly babies for my first Great North Run was becoming an obsession. We had already driven the route, which anyone who drives around that area will tell you, is not one of the traditional ways of entertaining the kids. Even when we got to South Shields, the wind was blowing Tom off his tiny feet, while Lizzie was pretending to be an aeroplane by opening her coat and entering UK airspace. The sand was blasting any exposed flesh from our bodies, but kids like a beach whatever the warning from the Met Office, so we stayed and played, even though you could have used my face to sand down your skirting boards.

Now I knew where every hill, every pothole, every gap in the dual carriageway would be on the day, but I was no further forward in my plans, and every magazine article and t’interweb forum said you needed one. This was making me nervous. And a bit of a pain.

That was when Lizzie hit me with, “Dad, why don’t you just run and enjoy it?” Yeah, why didn’t I just eat jelly babies when I wanted one, or have a drink when I got thirsty? Perfect.

I don’t know if Lizzie has written a cat poster message. I don’t know if it would work against an image of sunbeams bursting through rainclouds. I don’t know if David Brent would use it to inspire his staff as they merge with the Swindon branch. But it works for me. Because six year olds don’t need a kitten climbing a step to take on the world.

Socks, Dads and Videotape.

Even though I don’t often buy things, I quite like shops. With guitar shops, it’s the smell of the wood, and the sight of those beautifully crafted instruments. In a bike shop, it’s the styling and lines of a racing bike, and I do love the smell of rubber and WD40. There is no getting away from it; I do not come out of that sentence very well. And in Newcastle, there’s a football shop that sells old programmes and memorabilia.  Tom loves it. He’s with his daddy, looking at football stuff. He’s happy and safe.

But running shops are different. At first, I was without a clue. Yet the helpful and friendly staff answered my ridiculous questions about trainers. No, they don’t have magic laces. Yes, they will make you bouncy like a bouncy kangaroo. No, they don’t have a heel that swings out so you can insert a James Bond radio transmitter and call in an air strike. Actually, there are trainers with a heel like this. It talks to your watch or Ipod. But I can’t wear those trainers because I have stupid flat feet and walk a bit funny.

I didn’t know this until I went to buy my first pair of running trainers. The guy in the shop was great, even though I thought he was having a laugh when he made me roll up my trouser leg and stand on one foot. Perfectly normal in a running shop. I was joining a special club. I liked this place.

This wasn’t just a new shop; it was a new world. Shorts with built in pants? Who knew?! Tops that take the sweat from your skin and pass it through to the outside, so you don’t get cold and clammy? Witchcraft, I tells ye! And, wait for it, socks with a ‘L’ for the left foot and a ‘R’ for the right foot?! Yes please!  When I got home, the kids were very interested in my new box of trainers and socks, initally because they thought the box was something for them. But they were howling on the floor when they saw my socks. They wanted to see more socks like mine. They wanted to see more socks bad. So I took them to see the socks.

I should point out that they have got lots of lovely toys and have lovely day trips and have a lovely life. They don’t really need to go to a running shop to see the socks as a form of entertainment. They are not Dickensian street urchins with a knackered sock and nits as their sole companions. They are curious and confident. And that’s a dangerous mix in a shop with interesting socks.

The first sign of trouble was when child one ran one way and child two ran the other. Child one, Lizzie, found the rails with daddy’s funny new socks. I wasn’t really that worried about the fact that as soon as she started fiddling with them, thirty pairs of socks fell down, along with the rails. This lack of parental shame was due to the distraction of the muffled voice of child two, Tom, asking for my help. Because his head was stuck.

The seats to sit on as you try on the trainers are round and can seat at least four excited new runners at a time. In the centre of the seats is a hole about six inches in diameter, full of running socks to wear as you try on your new trainers. You can see the issue here. Tom, on the other hand, was three, and didn’t see the issue until it was too late.

To get the fully muffled effect of the following conversation, you might need to stick your head in your sock drawer. Then you need to take it out for my bits.

(With your head in the drawer) “Daddy. Daddy, I’ve found some socks!”

(Take your head out of the drawer) “Son, what are you doing in there?”

(With your head further in the drawer) “Daddy, it’s dark!”

(Take your head out of the drawer) “Get your head out, son. No-one wants to wear socks that you’ve had your face in.”

(With your head further in the drawer, and starting to sound like mum will certainly hear about this) “Daddy! I can’t get my head out and the socks are going in my mouth and they taste like socks!”

(Take your head out of the drawer and sound like you’re slightly embarrassed and worried, without outwardly showing it, by sounding overly chatty and jovial) “Oh, Tom! Err, what are you like?! Ha ha! Err, ha…” Oh, no.

Then climb onto the top of your chest of drawers to pull your head out of the drawer, just as if you had to pull your son out of a hole by the ankles, while the rest of the shop try to get their video phones to start up quickly enough to film the whole thing.

Tom still likes the socks. But I bet he won’t get his head stuck in a hole full of socks for a while. That would be ridiculous.

Bugs, Knees and Whoops-a-Daisy

“He can’t walk now. Used to run every day. Knackered knees, always got a cold. But his dad smoked 200 tabs a day, four cans of Special Brew before brekky and lived ‘til he was 97. Only went to Boot Hill when they caught him in bed with 22 year old twins. Now that’s the way to go…” When you start running, there are two opinions offered by a significantly huge number of people in your life who don’t run: That it is dangerous, and that it is mostly pointless. If I could have ten pence for every time someone said, “What’s the point? You could be hit by a bus tomorrow!” I would have lots of pence.  And for younger readers or those who aren’t fans of the movie Gunfight at the OK Corral, Boot Hill is a cemetery. Charming.

If you say it’s because you want to be a bit fitter, some -not all, but some- take it as a judgement on them. As if I’m saying, ‘We have the same lifestyle now. I find it to be unsatisfactory as I cannot touch my toes. Therefore I think you are in a state, too.’ But I didn’t judge, and don’t now. It would be great if years of a beer and burgers diet worked out.  For some, they do.  For me, they didn’t.

Pretty soon into running, I needed to give it more purpose than getting fit. My brother noticed that I was losing weight. My dad, who used to be fit but now isn’t, said, “What do you want, a medal?” Hmm…Yes. Yes, I do, I thought. That’s it. I want a medal. And I knew they gave them for completing the Great North Run.

I wanted that medal after running outside approximately once.  I asked my cousin, who had been going to a gym to become a kick boxer, if he would like to run it.  His first fight was years away, so he needed a point to all the training, too. For the purposes of this tale, we might as well call him Chuck Norris. Hope that’s OK, Mr Norris.  Like lots of the most interesting decisions, we made ours in the pub, and we made it on March 29^th, 2011. At about twenty past seven.

This date is accurate, because Newcastle United were about to play Nottingham Forest. My wife has never been less than amazed, slightly befuddled, and understandably worn out, by my ability to recall the names of average Newcastle United midfielders of the early 1980s, even though I have forgotten that I was supposed to get the kids out of the bath an hour ago. It’s a gift and a curse, I suppose. But there are two good reasons for remembering this event: firstly, I was about to have my first training set-back, because secondly, on the way home, I started to feel absolutely dreadful.

I say absolutely because by the time I got home and crawled up the stairs, I didn’t think I could feel much worse. I could, but only rolled up in a ball under the duvet.  Even my eyes hurt. Was this the strain of cold you get when you run? I knew athletes sometimes felt ill as they trained for an event. I wasn’t sure I counted as an athlete just yet.  What I had, was ‘flu. Proper ‘flu. Not, ‘I feel a bit rubbish so I’m going to watch Jeremy Kyle all day’ ‘flu. This was during the Swine ‘Flu epidemic, and if there is one thing I’m good at, it’s thinking I’ve got whatever new strain of general shivering pain that I’ve read about that day. I’ve been pregnant twice.

But this was also when I realised I was a runner. Despite the fact that I couldn’t move without feeling like everything was going to fall off, I was wondering when I would be able to go for a run again. I had more than one bug. I had Great North Run fever.

A few recovery weeks later, and running was becoming easier.  The four mile loop around the estate soon turned into five. A couple of weeks later, six. That’s nearly half way on the road from Newcastle to South Shields. I thought, this Great North Run thing might really happen. I found a last minute charity place and worked out that I had just enough time to train. Nervous, terrified, and really excited, I rang Chuck. “How’s the training?”

“Not good. My knee is killing me.” He sounded serious.

“Is it serious?” I sounded worried.

“Cheers mate. Don’t worry. But basically, my knee is shot.” He didn’t sound like Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris’ knees wouldn’t hurt unless Chuck had given them permission. Which he wouldn’t. He didn’t sound like it was going to get better with a rest, either.

“What about a rest? Have you been to a physio?”

“Yeah… I’ve wrecked the cartilage. I can’t do the run.” The disappointment in his voice was as painful as his knee.

Turns out that while I had upped the mileage gradually, he hadn’t. I was up to six miles. He had added a mile every other run and was up to ten miles. Ten miles! His general fitness through kick boxing training meant running felt easy. But now he couldn’t run one mile without his knee feeling like some big lads with sticks were rearranging his knee caps. Turns out that if you step up the miles too quickly, you can hurt yourself.  I didn’t want the nay-sayers to be right.  I was flummoxed.

But in a world in which you can pay to eat until you’re sick; where it’s cheaper to get drunk than to drink pop; and where we think it’s a bit weird when someone runs because they want to rather than because they have to, I’m going to take my chances.  I like running.  In the race up Boot Hill, there are no winners.

Lycra, curtain… action.

It might be the lighting. It might be the freak show mirrors. Whatever it is, no-one looks good in the fitting room mirror. Don’t kid yourself. Hell’s teeth, my bum looks big in that. No, I don’t suit red. Or green. Or any colour that might make another human look at me. Oh, bollocks with this. I’ll wear the same shirt I wore last time. It hasn’t got a hole in it.

However, you cannot avoid buying running kit. If you’re going to run, you need Lycra kit with no seams in the key chaffing areas. Chaffing is dreadful.  It is excruciating. Imagine paper cuts filled with sweat, channels of stinging pain. Now imagine them on your, err, private bits. Now imagine you have ten miles to go, each step grating your nether-regions as though Jamie Oliver is trying to zest up a salad with a pair of testicles.

And you wouldn’t believe what cotton can do to a bloke’s nipples. I’ve seen them streaming with blood. They look like stigmata. Mine have never been quite like that, but they have looked like I was trying to ‘Vogue’ on a run. It looks even worse when you try to relieve the pain by pulling at the front of your top in the relevant nipple area while you think no-one is looking, only to have anyone female appear out of a gate or drive past. There are some things you can’t explain to the local constabulary. “Well, officer, I was trying to prevent the crusted area of my nipples from spewing blood everywhere…” They wouldn’t even give you a phone call.

In fact, it might be worse for women. A bit of moob-loob will sort out my chaffing; women need a sports bra. I’m no expert, but if ever there was a complicated piece of clothing, this is it. Apparently they are easy to put on, which is just as well, because they have to work in so many directions at the same time. They have to hold things in place without moving themselves or causing a hullaballoo around the edges. The agony of the potentially wrong choice.

So I knew I needed to buy the right kit. My issue then, and now, is that all of the adverts for running kit feature an athletic Adonis who looks like he has been hewn from the granite trail he skips across like a ballet dancing gazelle. At this time, I looked like I had been moulded from play dough and left beside a radiator.  But the first time I tried on a pair of running tights has scarred me for life. And it is all because of my then two year old little boy.

I had decided to go to a factory outlet shop for my running tights. Following the incident with the Wii and the telly, I decided that for H&S reasons, I should run outside like other people. It was March, still a bit chilly at night, and there was no way I was going to let anyone see me run during the day.  Running tights were a product I needed more than desired.  I quickly chose some tights and, feeling like I did not belong in a shop full of people who were thinner, fitter, and possibly judging a podgy bloke buying running tights, went off to the fitting rooms. Crucially, Tom came in with me.

I now know that there isn’t really enough room for a tubby daddy, a two year old Tasmanian Devil, and the shock of my body in Lycra, in a factory outlet fitting room. Especially one that only has an unsubstantial curtain between your self-respect and the judgemental world.

There was, as there always is, a slight gap between the curtain and the shop. Tom thought this was very exciting, in the way that two year olds find anything they can stick their head in exciting. So did I, but in the way that not knowing whether or not you’ve got enough petrol to get to the garage is exciting. Tom saw his mum and his sister, and pulled the curtain around his head to shout over to them. At this precise moment, I was standing one one leg to roll down the tights off the end of my foot. I panicked. From an angle, anyone could see me through the gap. I stretched out my hand but a perfect storm blew through the fitting room as Tom shouted, I fell over and pulled the curtain open, while my legs, Lycra and boxer shorts had a big fight with gravity.  Everyone looked over to the sound of a poor little boy shouting for his mum.

I wanted to shout for mine, but my mouth just opened and closed.

Deciding that these tights would be fine after all, thanks, I squirmed as I handed over my credit card.  Two weeks later, I had to grow some potentially zestable testicles, go to a running shop and buy some tights that actually fitted. These days, I buy most of my stuff online.

N-n-n-n-nineteen and as fit as a broken guitar.

I could feel my mouth fill with blood. Well, it was some blood. And it wasn’t because someone had lamped my naive student face. It was the gunk from my lungs, which were about to prove they were the size of a tennis court when you lay them out flat because they were making an unscheduled appearance. And I couldn’t slow down because I had no idea where I was and not staying up with my companions would mean getting lost and running even further. But let’s rewind a few hours to the day before I realised that at 19 years old, I was totally unfit.

It was the first week at College and I was trying to make friends and fit in, which was interesting given that most of the people I was meeting were PE students who ran a lot, not just for buses, whereas I played the guitar. Running and guitars are two things I still love now but which are also impossible to do at the same time with dignity or tune. But in my late teens, drinking beer and eating fatty stuff, with a side order of saturated fat a-plenty, certainly fitted in with playing the guitar. So I did. Lots. The problem was, my metabolism had slowed down like a marathon runner who had forgotten to have breakfast and laced up diving boots instead of trainers. Do diving boots even have laces? And I had only one interest in marathons; this was in the days before they were called Snickers.

So imagine my surprise when I blurted out, “Yes, I would love to come for a run!” Now, until this point of my life, those words had never stumbled from my mouth. I had occasionally said, “We had better run!” or, “No, I am not going to run for that bus. There’ll be another in a minute.” But roughly 12 hours before the metallic taste of blood kicked the minty fresh toothpaste sensation from my chops, I had to ask, what was I talking about?

“Great!” said Phil. “Well, Carrie and I are going at seven tomorrow morning. Just meet us out the front.” Phil and Carrie were PE students. Phil was a born athlete. I had been born, I was sure of that, but there our athletic similarities ended. Carrie could run and run. She did. Frequently. At a rapid pace. And what was this seven o’clock in the morning? It sounded more like a shift pattern than a time to begin the day.

To be honest, not that confident of very much, I was struggling a bit to be me. Phil and Carrie seemed to have settled in. Everyone liked them because they were so likeable. But I was simply the quiet little bloke from Newcastle and, once we had started running, my inability to make any other noise than a sort of wheezing hiss like a ripped whoopee cushion was not doing anything to change this view. Phil and Carrie were chatting and running. At the same time. They were out for what I would one day call an ‘aerobic run.’ I was out of my mind.

We were running around the walled defences of Chester, a pretty city with history oozing from the cracks in the pavement. The ghost of a Roman soldier here, the ruins of Ye-olde-Building there. This was temporarily lost on me as I burnt my lungs to keep up with the others. “You OK?” they would ask, at first conversationally, then out of medical concern. I know they slowed down for me. As we got nearer to the College, I dimly recognised where I was through the haze of sweat-blurred vision and made a noise that was supposed to say, “You guys go on, thanks for waiting for me!” It came out more like, “Urghha ay!” They knew what I meant. Either that or they needed to get back sometime the same day.

My feet were killing me. They had been breeding blisters like showering Gremlins and they had exploded into life in my socks. It was the only explanation for the blood and lack of skin. I could barely walk. I had to shuffle on the outside edges of my feet. Years later, 13 year old girls would walk around in knackered Ugg boots in much the same motion. As the blood washed off in the shower, the flappy bits of skin from the balls of my feet started talking to me. I didn’t like what they had to say. Apparently, I shouldn’t have been trying to be someone I wasn’t. I should stick to being me. So I plugged in my guitar, ate another packet of Jaffa Cakes and waited for the pubs to open. Nothing refreshes the effort of a 7am run like a pint of lager and a bag of pig snacks.

1983: Cross Country Sicky Burps.

Tell you who always gets my 50p, even if they put a four tin family pack of tomato soup on top of the crisps: kids raising money for their sports team by doing bag packing. They wear their club kit, and they’re dead proud of it. Their coaching is delivered by the unsung heroes of the grass-roots of sport. And for all they do, these people deserve a medal the weight of a family pack of tomato soup. Well done, and thank you.

In the early 80s, our primary school coaching was in its infancy, literally; it was one of the lovely teachers from the infant class who organised our school cross-country team, gave up her lunchtimes and put the team together.

One of the spin-off benefits of the lunchtime training sessions was having a packed lunch and being able to leave the dining hall early. It also meant you could have a bag of crisps, which was a major cause of jealousy, even if they had been smashed to bits by inexperienced bag packers at the weekend. One of the dinner ladies, who clearly despised children, and possibly all living things, did not like children leaving the hall early. This was not ideal preparation for a race; there is nothing that makes kids feel sick more than shovelling down a ham sandwich and a bag of Quavers before they run around a football pitch six times.

We gathered outside a classroom with butterflies on the window and a poster of Steve Cram on the wall, and waited for our teacher to emerge with a surgically implanted cup of coffee. She was wearing a pair of trainers that would now be seen as so retro cool they would be worth hundreds of pounds on e-bay.

In 1983, however, there was no such thing as e-bay, retro cool or, indeed, warming up. Just a teacher, a whistle, and a clip board of good intentions. “Right, then,” she shouted enthusiastically, “six times around the football pitch! Don’t go too fast at the start or you’ll end up too tired for the finish, and don’t throw up in the flower beds. Go!”

And so started the trials for my primary school cross-country team. The first half lap felt like I was drinking hot sand, but the race and the Quavers sicky-burps soon settled down. I didn’t know the cut off time for making the team, but without ever winning a race, I was on it. Some kids would cut the corners but I was a goody two trainers. Training was stepped up by a lap every week. However, we were running around a flat football pitch, and this gave us a false sense of the terrain we would face at the city championships. To be honest, it didn’t give us a taste of the kind of terrain we would face when we went to the shops. The problem was, with the exception of Angela from my class, not many of us were particularly quick. Those of us who were quick had no stamina. And while I think Angela won her championship race, I know I certainly did not.

I know this, because on the day of the Newcastle Schools Cross Country Championship, I was ill. I had tonsilitis, and my mam and dad let me lie about in their bed all day.  The scratching in my throat was nothing compared with the numbing, empty disappointment. I remember looking out of the window at the time the race would be held. I was gutted. I think my mam was even more gutted for me, and that made me even more gutted, leading to a vicious cycle of guttedness that we both tried to ignore while we watched Scooby-Doo in gutted silence at tea time.

A year later, I was in the team again, and this time, I wasn’t ill. And I learnt a valuable lesson that day: you can’t run a school cross-country championship wearing football boots if you’re not very good at tying your laces. They were whipping my legs to pieces. The kids from other schools were wearing proper running trainers. I knew I was out of my depth but I finished and just thought I wasn’t very good at running, which was certainly part of the story. I had psyched myself out as soon as I forgot how to tie a double bow.

I think this might have been the point of my life at which running became a conscious thing I had to choose to do instead of running as kids do, which is what they do to go anywhere. Knocking on the doors to see if your friends are ‘playing out’? Run to get there. Going to the shop for your mam because she reckons she really needs a tin of peas for your dad’s tea? Run to the shop. But suddenly, I was walking to friends’ houses. Slowly. And the tin of peas would have gone off by the time I got home from the shop. Running wasn’t something I enjoyed anymore for its own sake. I didn’t not like it; I just did it as a bi-product of playing football, which I did like.

So now, when I see school age kids going for a run, or wearing their sports team hoodies at the checkout as they destroy my crisps, I stop for a minute and think, yeah, well done… these days, it’s too easy to lead a digital non-life of waiting for things to happen, and these kids aren’t. They’re doing what they love, whether they’re any good at it or not, and are proud of their team. The kids are alright. Probably always have been.

Runner through the telly glass.

I blame the telly for what happened next, but you can decide for yourself. It might have been the pixel cat on the screen. It might even have been the swinging roof joists being delivered in our back garden at the time for our house extension (new bedroom over the old garage, garage brought forward, new toilet downstairs.) I might be slightly responsible, but the tale of how I got from the sofa, which by now had a Homer Simpson shaped bum print in it, to face planting a Panasonic Viera telly is a tale of woe. Actually, it’s a tale of Wii.

There used to be a programme on CBeebies called ‘Boogie Beebies.’ I liked Boogie Beebies. It was the type of kids’ TV that tried to make you feel like a responsible parent, making your child active while you weren’t. The hyper presenters, clad in T-shirts a shade of yellow that I can only charitably describe as ‘attention-seeking,’ would make up some dance moves based on a theme, like building an extension or driving a bus, and the kids would join in for the chorus. Lizzie used to watch it avidly.  She loved dancing along, looking adorable, as she copied the movements as flawlessly as it is possible when the next move is starting while you’re staring at your Noddy slippers. And then one day, she turned to me and asked if I would dance with her. She was about two years old.

One of the things I had always been looking forward to as a daddy was to dance with my little girl. I wanted to be that dad who would dance with his enthusiastic daughter at weddings. I’ll make a pig’s ear of the Macarena while the little ‘un will laugh and say, no daddy, not like that, you do this. She will put me to shame as she remembers the whole thing, while I will look on, useless but happy. I want to do these things before she becomes a professional teenager and sulks away in disgust, telling her friends I’m just some bloke from the hotel, and that they should ignore me and I might go away.

Well, I tried to follow Boogie Beebies. But the bit where I was bending over and digging up the road was a lot harder than I thought it should be. My belly was catching on my arm as I threw imaginary road surface over my shoulder. I sat down. I was knackered. Lizzie had boundless two year old energy. This wasn’t good. So I did the only sensible thing, and made a cup of tea and had a biscuit. Then I had another biscuit, just to keep my energy up.

Two years later, her new favourite programme was ‘Waybulloo’. There’s a section on the programme called yogo which is a bit like yoga for kids. Kids are naturally springy and just assume they can do things. It’s adults who assume the little ‘uns can’t, or in some cases shouldn’t, and then get frustrated a few years later when the same kids don’t think they can do something without even trying first. Anyway, I had all the flexibility of a concrete slab. Again, Lizzie asked if I would like to do yogo with her. “Yes, sweetheart, of course I will.”

Five minutes later, she had to help me up.

Something had to be done. And that thing to be done, I decided, was Wii-Fit. I dropped the hints (“I’m going to buy a Wii Fit in the Christmas sales and become a sculpted Adonis.”) My wife got me the Wii for my birthday, the Fit game for Christmas, and I loved it. No more biscuits, just plenty of Wii-Fit and jumping around the living room. I could feel the flab unflabbing, the inflexible slab, unslabbing. I would be able to get off the floor myself, thanks very much.

I slam-dunked basketballs, I played table tennis, and I even wore a T-shirt on a golf course that wasn’t real. I headed footballs and avoided panda heads, I was patronised by a bloke in a green top about my pilates performance, and I balanced on high wires. But my favourite activity was running. Wuhu Island was beautiful. It didn’t rain, there was a friendly cat you followed as though it was taking you to on a spiritual cat journey to fitness heaven, and everyone smiled while the console counted the metres. I went from five minutes to ten and thought, check me out. Two and a half thousand metres. That’s…that’s… more than a mile, anyway. That’s further than the walk to the biscuit shop.

But that was when I nearly went through the telly and nearly became one of those people they interview on programmes about A&E departments. If you haven’t ran around the island of Wuhu before, what you do is hold the remote control thingy and jog on the spot. The faster you pump your arms, the faster you run. But, I hear you typing in the comments box, you’re supposed to run with your legs. Well, it was, to an extent, this realisation that made me lose concentration and move my legs faster, but not on the spot. It might have been the new roof joists swinging around in the back garden. It might have been me contemplating the taste of a digestive made from pixels. But I accidently sprinted across the living room, couldn’t stop, threw myself over the top of the telly and knocked over a photo of the kids laughing and smiling at a picnic. My sweaty legs came to a stop on the precariously balanced screen, which would have made a mess if it hadn’t been for the yoghurt handprints that seemed to get all over the thing every time Lizzie ate something, even if it wasn’t a yoghurt.

Thankfully, because I was in the house alone, the only people who saw this ridiculous episode were the builders in our back garden who were having a break while they put the roof joists on our extension. As you can imagine, they were totally sympathetic to the event and asked me how I was instead of rolling around the garden laughing. And they never once mentioned this again during the build. Ever.