Sunday 4 September 2011

Are those my socks?

Well some of you may be reasonably bemused by the title of this post. Well to put it plainly, I was also very bemused, but it makes sense I swear. Bare with me.

Well recently, I have been training with a mate of mine, Lee. Running, that is. To get directly to the point, he started running about 11 weeks ago, after having being at base level ZERO for a fair while. He won't mind me saying this, but in his own words, his running (to begin with) was rather akin to "a fat dog gasping for air"... ¬¬

Even a sausage at the finish line would have been totally useless. Use it as a door stop perhaps.

But now, 11 weeks after the numerous runs and moaning with heavy breath, we are getting somewhere and the proverbial sausage at the finish line is getting much closer. The running is coming along well, and the mileage has been piling up slowly but surely. However, there is a gremlin holding him back from progress and inviting injury through the door. Once again to put it plainly, he has a REALLY SHIT pair of shoes. Somewhat similar to something you may catch Aladdin wearing in the street. And to be honest, even Aladdin probably had the better shoes.

These shoes have been called a number of harsh words from fellow members of the running group, the witty metaphors have been flying in all directions. To name a few examples:

  • "Just as useful as some ham stuck on your feet"
  • "You may as well be running with pitta breads on your feet"
  • "I guarantee you will lose these in the mud today" (HE DID)
  • "Oh, he's not still wearing those things is he? ..."
  • "I'm going to keep treading on your feet until you get some better shoes" (said by an 80 year old man)
Basically they aren't very good. And today, they were put through hell and back and came out the other side looking like pieces of material covered in droppings with some rubber lying around nearby. What I'm trying to  tell you is, that this very day Lee Buckley completed a open public cross country race.

Everyone was very impressed with his performance and he even got a spot prize for exceptional performance. He asked me and the coach at the club what races were coming up, because he wanted to compete with me before I leave for University. Lets just say that the Dartmoor Dash was not exactly the race I would have chosen for myself to start out easy. I had never run it before so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was told that it is "quite flat, for dartmoor".

I sort of just listened to this and took in the fact that it was quite flat. So I said to Lee, yeah this should be fine for you to run. To my dismay, this nugget of suggestion was somewhat of a red herring... Well I sort of ignored the fact that we were in DARTMOOR where there is NO FLAT. I mean, for those of you who aren't familiar with dartmoor, it is where the land army and the marines do their training.



2 miles in and I was running up hills and through bogs and mud and stuff... I suddenly thought, "shiiit, Lee is gonna have to run through this terrain..." 10 weeks ago he could barely run a mile without collapsing in a heap and now I have told him he could finish this race that I was honestly having trouble with myself! Essentially all the way around I was concerned for his life as I dipped and slumped through thick mud and peat. I felt like I had personally signed the execution papers and sent him toddling off to the race.

I finished well, coming in at 6th place in about 38 minutes or something for 5.18 miles according to my new garmin watch (woo, gadgets). I spend the next 20 minutes biting my nails wondering if Lee was curled up dead in a ditch somewhere on the course.

But then at roughly 59 minutes, I saw his 6"6 frame come tearing over the hill toward the finish line, in good form as well! We were all very pleased with his performance, deservedly. 

And to go back to the title, that was just when he somehow left his socks on the pavement outside a bus stop and we walked past them hours later like, what the hell are these doing here?

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