Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

Be Careful What You Wish For

by Russell Turner - 14:30 on 02 October 2017

Matchgirl has been a runner for as long as I’ve known her. This occasionally brings her joy, when the perfect combination of training, personal trainer and running shoes combine to spirit-raising effect, but more often produces only gloom: her times are poor; something’s aching, twinging or rubbing; her shoes are the wrong shade of pink.

Ten years we’ve been together and I’m still not clear about her motivation. Memories of dismal school cross-country runs don’t help solve the mystery.

Yet, after ten years, the bizarre pointlessness of someone running up and down hills when they’re not being chased by a machete-wielding maniac fades from inexplicable to just another part of life, like the running shoe mountain under the stairs, the quest for the ultimate running jacket, watching athletics and marathons on the TV, and finding magazines scattered around that feature young, slim and happy running goddesses on their covers. Photoshop and special lighting have not been used at all, I’m sure.

So what to most well balanced members of the population appears to be a masochistic punishment becomes ordinary. So ordinary that a few months ago, in a fit of let-the-fates-decide madness, and without telling Matchgirl, I entered the ballot for the London Marathon.

Today I received the official magazine and notification that I’d been awarded a ballot place. That sound you just heard was Matchgirl, who’ll learn about my secrecy for the first time when she reads this, screaming with laughter. (Followed by a grumble of jealousy. She’d also entered the ballot, as did Cathy the Runner. Sorry.)

This means I have less than 29 weeks to transform myself from a sedentary couch potato into a finely tuned running machine capable of completing the 26-mile course in under the six hours thirty minutes I hazarded on my application form, calcified spine and twisted right leg notwithstanding.

Doubtless I’ll get lots of good advice from Matchgirl about Garmins, shoes, nutrition and training programmes including intermediate 5ks, 10ks and half marathons. As for my first steps on the road to London, they can take place tomorrow. Today, it’s blowing a gale and chucking it down. What have I done?

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