I Just Ran Five Kilometres
October 11th, 2009, 15 Comments »
I don’t like reading braggy, boastful blog posts. I know I’m as guilty of them as anybody else. But when I read somebody writing about their recent award, weight loss or awesome new job, and I’m sitting at home all awardless and fat, I feel the little green Kobolds of Envy and Jealousy whispering in my ear canal. It’s petty, I know, but what’re you going to do?
This is one of those blog posts.
Today I ran five kilometres for the first time in my life. I know that five kilometres isn’t very far–for most runners it’s trivial. My siblings are all long distance runners of one kind or another–just this morning my elder sister, bless her, ran her first half-marathon.
But you need to understand what an unlikely achievement this is. I was an indoor kid, and I always hated Phys Ed class. As I said recently:
Whenever we did any kind of long distance running, I would usually come third to last in the class. I’d beat the corpulent Chinese kid and an asthmatic Brit with skin the colour of fluorescent light.
My chief torturer in Phys Ed was one Wayne Desjardins, who owned every cliche a gym teacher could. Once, after executing a particularly awful flexed-arm hang, I cursed under my breath. He made me do push-ups on my birdlike arms while the rest of the class took their turns. We did these things in alphabetical order.
I’ve always hated all kinds of exercise, except for some competitive sports and the occasional hike. I especially despised running. I mentioned running to my step-mother recently and she just sighed and said, “ah, Darren, it’s a hateful thing”. Indeed.
A little over two months ago, I wrote about an iPhone app that helps you get off the couch and running five kilometres in nine weeks. I predicted it would take me 12 weeks, and I was right. I blame lethargy and busyness.
It’s All For Vanity
Do I still hate running? Pretty much, yeah. Though it has granted me 30 or 40 minutes of much-needed free thinking time during a particularly busy couple of months. So that’s a plus.
Will I keep running? I think so. Frankly, I’m motivated by vanity–I don’t want to get corpulent–so that’s unlikely to change any time soon.
Oh, and Mr. Desjardins? He can suck it.
In writing this post, I was reminded of a terrific song by the lovely and talented Gemma Hayes. It’s called “Ran For Miles”. You can watch a live version here in English, or here it is in Irish:
How is it that Ms. Hayes isn’t world famous yet? She’s a great singer-songwriter and, as you’ve probably observed, rather easy on the eyes. See also the single from her new EP.
For you kids out there, ‘EP’ stands for ‘Extended Play’. Ironically, it’s shorter than a full-length album.