Running Blog 21st July 2022

When I’m Sixty-Four

It seems starting a running blog at the age of 64 is faintly amusing. In fact starting anything at 64 is likely to produce wry smiles from those of insufficient years to understand that underneath this 64-year-old exterior lies a 17-year-old lad who plays rugby one day, kayaks the next, has a full round of gold plus a hot curry, gets up the following morning, and sets out on a leisurely 10 mile run in the sun, with his shirt off, just to increase his sun-tan.

The exterior reality is, shall we say, different.

Difference number one: be careful how you put your running shoes on. Leaning over and pulling on the laces might put your back out – again. Number two: yes, make sure you’ve done a number two before heading out, especially for a longer run. Number three: remember, nerve damage in toe on left foot limits the run to 10K. Number 4: you’ve just recovered from Covid, before that a bad back after sneezing put it out, and before that a muscle tear in the right calf…so maybe a very slow 5K.

And off I go. An hour later.

I don’t think I look too embarrassing. The shorts, black, are appropriately long without looking trendy and my shirt, black breathable fabric, is modest but not from the 1970s unlike my 17-year-old inner man. I’ve learnt not to pull up my short socks, somehow that would look silly, and does. But I do have outrageous orange shoes and I’m proud of the fact that the link to a more rebellious past isn’t completely broken.

Early morning - quiet

It's 6 a.m. and I’ve driven up to the scorched and tanned Clifton Downs and parked in the shade. It’s 6 a.m. because, despite retirement, my body seems to have a secret alarm that goes off at 5 or 4 but rarely 7 or 8. The advantage to me is that I can run without having to trip over other groups of athletic younger things and their training camp exercises, or battle through the earnest Nordic walking crowd with their ridiculous ski poles, struggling along on level ground (Yes, I know. I can hear you whispering…'with your bad back and feet maybe you should be stop running and start Nordicking?’ Over my dead body...is my presumptuous reply).

Freedom is leaving your poles by the nearest tree

The sun is up. I do my stretches. Careful! Manage to survive those and set off. It’s warm already, and quiet, just the swish of impressively fast bikers on expensive racing bikes and padded lycra. The early morning sun means I’m running into my long shadow and I wonder if the Nordic walkers will overtake me chattering away about health and wisdom, I’m running very slowly.

At the top of the first small rise, I can feel my heart rate and breathing are different to when I’m slouched at home writing a blog. Press on, down to the lookout point where you can peer down on Clifton Suspension bridge to your left and along the Avon to Shire, Pill, and beyond to Avonmouth...and buy ice cream later. I don’t stop. Before long I’m running back up Ladies’ Mile Road, past the Water Tower, and around to the long slightly downhill stretch to the small crossroad where all the camper vans are parked with their two fingers raised at the parking restrictions, and I’m back at the car. It’s a 5K route.

I am so very happy to have finally gone out for a run. I don’t care a hoot that I could have been overtaken by unidexters, frightened slugs, or slowworms. I have completed a 5K in glorious early morning sunshine, my back’s OK, my legs can still operate the accelerator and brake, and I didn’t stop.

Right at the end of my jog, just along from where I parked the car is a tree stump, the council having felled the diseased tree before it took out a whole set of Nordic Walkers or pedigree dog-walkers. From this stump I can now see a small branch sprouting a bunch of very healthy looking green leaves. It makes me think of all those of us whose lives are curtailed and restricted in some ways, even nations that decline and lose territory and identity…but not completely, and seemingly from nothing, from the apparent end, against all the odds, recover and the first shoots of recovery are seen.

In a very small way, that’s how I feel after so many weeks of looking plaintively at my orange trainers lying by the front door, and the shorts and shirts redundant in the drawer, simply to have jogged very slowly round the Downs.

On a larger scale of course, if one knows a few bible passages, is this from Isaiah 11: ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit’ a passage that weaves together history and Messianic prophecy. Just for the moment, though, I’m going to drink in the hope, that this 5K is like a new shoot.

From the stump of Jesse…

Paris 2024 isn’t far off, I better get training.