The Need for Speed

The Need for Speed
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday September 14, 2013

It’s athletics season. I know this because hurdles are sprouting from the soggy turf around school ovals. Long jump sandpits are raked and crunchy with wet sand. I see girls with stilts-for-legs limbering up for the high jump. And I feel a wave of relief that my sports carnival days are behind me.

When I was a child, running races was an exercise in humiliation. I was gifted with neither speed nor endurance. At the crack of the starter’s gun, I would jump in fright while the other kids charged out of the blocks. My swifter classmates would become a blur as they streaked away from me. I’d command my legs to accelerate but already, the gap between me and them was widening. By the half way mark, my screaming lungs would overrule any fantasies about finishing in the top eight. I knew I was going to come a pink and flustered last. Again.

Up ahead, some kid with racehorse genes and a slipstream would feel the snap of the winner’s tape and the pack would charge over the line as parents clapped and cheered. No-one needed to clock the time of the pig-tailed straggler, division 6, making her lonely finish. Race officials were already pinning ribbons to scrawny chests barely out of breath. How I yearned to be fussed over in the winner’s circle, to spend the day with a blue ribbon fluttering against my shirt.

Later, in high school, I tried out for the hurdles. I thought my years of trampolining might give me an edge at jumping and running combined. The hurdlers I’d seen were glorious to watch. They darted down the track like gazelles, gliding over the hurdles, each arc barely a blip in the silky rhythm of their stride.

And then it was my turn: I mowed down every hurdle but one, scraping the skin off my shin and wrenching my ankle.  

“Now that’s what I call a demolition derby!” My gym teacher patted my shoulder as I limped off to sick bay. Miss Wadsworth must have been pushing forty but she had the body of a greyhound and a knack for shattering egos: “Stick with softball, hey?” she called, “There’s only eighteen metres between bases!” 

Even now, I feel sorry for kids with no speed. I don’t begrudge fast kids their glory, but it pains me to watch the losers: they look so dejected. I want to reach out to those little downcast faces and whisper: “Coming first is over-rated. It’s how you handle coming last that counts.”

So I grew up to be a walker. Walkers think joggers should stay at home and run in a wheel  – like hamsters – so we don’t have to look at them. But they’re everywhere in my suburb. The same beefy middle-aged man pounds past me as I stride up the hill to my local playing fields. I greet him with a jaunty “Morning!” because I’m not struggling for air. Sometimes he’ll grunt: “Mornin” (no joyous exclamation mark). Other times he just jerks his chin in my direction because he’s trying to hold back a heart attack. I hold my breath against his pungent sweet-sour smell and try not to stare at his contorted tomato-coloured face as he passes. But I think: “No jogger ever looks happy!”

The irony here is that, at 45, I’ve taken up running. I like to call it running because it makes me sound like an athlete. Now that I have my own tomato-face I can tell you why all joggers look pained: because they are.

Here’s what I’ve discovered about middle-aged joggers since becoming one six weeks ago: running only becomes enjoyable when you turn into your street and you realise that in fifteen seconds, you will stumble through your gate. Then your lungs and your legs will finally stop hurting.

But last week, determined to experience a runner’s high, I turned up at the playing fields where the super-mums do their hard-core training.

The super-mums introduced me to the trainer guy who we’d be paying to yell: “Okay ladies! Off you go, across the oval, round the cricket nets and back.”

I took off across the grass, pumping my arms and urging on my legs  until I could feel the headwind in my face and the dewy grass flattening under my hoofs. As I rounded the cricket nets it dawned on me that I had hit the front – the super-mums were at my heels, sprinting and talking at the same time.

I tore back towards the smug trainer guy, my chest burning, legs howling. As I reached him, he began to clap. “Nice!” he yelled. I had won! WON! I bent double and panted violently (and euphorically) as the super-mums cantered in still discussing their new season bikinis.

And then smug trainer guy shouted: “Righto ladies, that was your warm-up! Now for the sprints!”

I handed him a tenner, got into my car and drove home.