Running from Zombies

Due to end-of-degree time restraints you might find that my posts are getting shorter and shorter. However, with my readship ever in mind I asked running machine Matt “The Flash” Fowle to entertain the masses while I plod on with my dissertation.

So here we have…Matt’s story.

Sai asked me to write something for her blog. She maintained the request even after I told her I’d write about the genealogy of badgers so she must be truly desperate to hear my thoughts, or just really busy on her dissertation. In the end I chucked the badgers and went with the theme of running instead.

I have so many reasons to run.

At the end of last year it struck me that I could lose weight, control my diabetes and help fix my depression by running. One solution for three of the biggest problems in my life seemed too elegant to resist. I’ve always had a romantic view of running as the best way to loseweight. Probably because of how it doesn’t require a partner or gym or any special equipment beyond shoes and, for me, music. It’s the simplest of exercises. Also of the various ways to help depression it’s clearly the best because as well as giving you a short term burst of endorphins it’s also helping to improve self-esteem, health and all that bollocks so there is a long-term fix there.

So with that in mind I got a Nike Plus for Christmas and suddenly I had a whole new reason to run that was even more important than the original reasons. Beating Sai! We set up a challenge to see who could run furthest in a month. Now she’s been doing this for longer and runs further than me but I was convinced that if I just ran more frequently I could beat her. In the first month I was ill for acouple of weeks which gave her a slight advantage and she mullered me. In the second month I prevailed! Now in a way I only won because Sai’s running was affected by a leg injury but the fact is that I pushed myself hard. I forced myself to go further distances and to goto the gym when I was knackered after a soul grinding day at work and even to sneakily run 6k (more than I’d done in a single go at that point) only a few hours before the end of the challenge to push myself ahead. Some might call that sneaky and treacherous opportunism but I call it thinking outside the box. In this case the box is morality. Now in our current competition Sai is so far ahead that I’m convinced she’s using some advanced military cybernetic exoskeleton(and they do exist) and my only real hope for catching up is if she injures herself or I get bitten by a radioactive spider.

But that doesn’t matter because recently I’ve caught sight of a new reason to run which trumps them all (even defeating Sai) and that’s the pure joy of running. I’ve only experienced it rarely because usually I’m too caught up in the pain in my legs, chest, brain and indeed everywhere with nerve endings to feel anything else. You may have picked up that I’m not a natural runner. Running comes as easily to me as piano playing does to a gerbil but a couple of times there have been moments when I get the pace exactly right and music is on agood beat and the distance melts away and there is an effortless purity to it all. I’m suddenly free of any stress, any worries, anything but the rhythm of the running and the movement of my muscles. It’s a beautiful feeling and I’m sure I’ll be able to capture it more often when my running becomes less laboured. That’s a reason to hold onto and that will be why eventually I’ll simply run because the running will have become part of who I am. I think that I’ll be a better person for it.

I’ve even got a plan like Sai’s plan about what length of run she’ll try to do each year although my anticipation of what I’ll be able to accomplish differs from Sai’s in a couple of small ways.