On Sunday Nicky and I pedal
down to Carnegie and back and I show her the house my good woman and I will own
on 12 December. Before we get there I comment that my crutch is sore, a foreign
feeling for 15 years. That’s how off the bike I’ve been.
This morning in Sydney I wake
at six, do some leg raises to ward off any possibility of back spasm, do the
first ten press-ups I’ve done since abandoning the gym in May. After breakfast
and blogging I take a brisk 50-minute walk interspersed with maybe a dozen
hundred metre bursts of running. The beachfront here at Brighton-Le-Sands is
perfect for walking and running.
Although it feels good to run,
I’m cautious. Last time I decide to run seriously for fitness I run too far,
strain a calf. The physio says just run a hundred metres, walk a while, then
run again. I’m not built to run, never was, but still it comes naturally. I
think I have an economical style.
Ron McLarty’s The memory of running is one of my
all-time favourite books. It tells the story of Smithy Ide, obese drunkard
whose sister with schizophrenia dubs him the running boy. Much later Smithy
rides a bike across America to identify the body of his long-missing sister. No
one would publish the book till Stephen King heard it read on radio.
I’ve never been a running boy,
obsessed. But at 15 I discover I can run long distances, at speed. I get up
early, in the dark, bolt three and a half miles in pretty quick time. I push
hard; I’m not jogging. I run like the wind.
I’ll never run like the wind
again, but I want to run, naturally, not as though I’m trying to catch up to
the belly attached to me that’s dragging me along, or down. I want to feel
light on my feet. Perhaps it’s a dream, a memory of running, real running.
My mother loved running as a
girl, won the cup as best sprinter at Preston Girls High School. She says she
knew she was old when she could no longer run. She must have run in secret
because I never saw her run, ever.
I want to be seen running.
Rock on.
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