Some of my friends and neighbours call me Runner John which is very flattering considering I was such a hopeless runner when I was growing up. Pathetic is a good word to describe my running. My entire school life was full of regular embarrassment as I constantly finished with the plodders in every race they ever put me in. It reached the stage where I would run the streets at night trying everything to get a little faster. I did long surges. I did short sprints. I pushed it hard up every hill I could find. Nothing improved my speed. My funny little legs just couldn’t move quickly.
I played Australian Rules football as a teenager but I was, not surprisingly, never fast enough. Then without realising it, I found myself enjoying jogging and the 14 fitness benefits AFL training endows, as well as the feel good natural drugs it produces such as dopamine and serotonin. I’m not sure what this means but I also discovered that I was pretty fast running backwards. No one ever beat me going backwards but there aren’t many races going backwards. Maybe my lack of speed is a bio-mechanical thing?
I was visiting friends in Griffiths NSW and enjoying the wine festival in 1977 when someone mentioned a “fun run” starting in three hours. “A what run?” I’d had at least four glasses of wine but immediately stopped drinking and entered the race. I’d never heard of a fun run before but suddenly there were at least 700 skinny looking people wearing little shorts and strange shoes in weird colours. The whole gang looked like pale and undernourished nerds.
So I joined them in the warm up area and went through the strange ritual most were doing called stretching. All very eccentric. Running ten kilometres wasn’t a problem and I loved passing a few runners in my long walk shorts and Dunlop Volley tennis shoes. Something odd obviously occurred in that run as next week I bought red running shoes, which cost a weeks rent, and two pairs of skimpy shorts. That’s me …a born again runner. Then I bought “The Complete Book of Running” and I was hooked.
My daily runs went from four kilometres to eight km then ten. A few months later I was running sixty to eighty kms every week. I was very slow but didn’t seem to tire. I studied the sport and learned about slow and fast twitch fibres. A cruel fact: sprinters can be 15 turned into marathoners but marathoners cannot be made into sprinters. In other words, we cannot increase the amount of fast twitch fibres we inherent. How to overcome this? You can’t. But you can get stronger and increase the cadence or tempo. Long runs result in better times due to the increase in strength.
I was almost forty when I ran my first marathon and I was bitterly disappointed when I failed to finish under three hours. I don’t know why three hours is a big deal but it certainly is. That Sunday morning in Melbourne was the hottest October day in thirty five years and vans and trucks were hired to supply water and ice to the runners. Like thousands of others I ran a lot of the race holding chunks of ice on the top of my head. It’s not a good look and doesn’t help your time either! But now I was addicted to LSD (Long slow distance) with the result that a few months later I ran the Canberra International Marathon in 2 hrs 50 minutes. Some people predicted I would become a top twenty runner but I still had no speed so that was impossible. My times improved but not dramatically.
I was almost fifty five when I stopped being a serious runner. I had completed about fifteen marathons by this stage and most of them were around the 2 hrs 45 minute mark. I trained like a maniac and drove from Canberra to Adelaide for the state championship but my new baby daughter was very sick the night before the race and I couldn’t run. The next year I attempted the same routine and drove to the Gold Coast marathon which I’d heard was a fast course. I averaged over one hundred and thirty kilometres a week in preparation but again the running gods were against me. This time both my kids were really ill and I didn’t start.
By this stage my race times had come down but not dramatically. I was almost fifty when I gave up trying to do a PB of 2 hours 30 minutes. Stopped being serious and just ran for fitness. Then I got into the fun run thing and half-marathons. (Half marathons is a dumb name! Do we have events for the half 100 metres or the half ten kms ?). Running in by one second which is impressive considering I towed her over the line. A few years later we were living on the Gold Coast. I ran the Half Marathon dressed (if that is the correct word? Attired?) in running shorts and a bow tie and carrying the tray of drinks.The watching crowd screamed and jeered like drunks at the footy.This reaction was the trigger for me to do more silly Half-marathons. Each year it was a challenge to better the crowd reaction of the previous year. It was also a relief that I didn’t have the pressure of trying for a personal best time. The enthusiastic crowd reaction was a reward in itself. Tiger Woods was the world’s number one golfer at Canberra was a joy. No pollution, cool sunny weather, bike paths linking all the suburbs and endless mountain and forest tracks. The running club was very active and there were weekly races. My favourite was a severe test up a rock strewn track to the top of Black Mountain. They titled it “The Rocky Horror Ten Km.”
The first fun run I ever did (with the exception of the wine festival) was 9.6 km and I borrowed a bike-trailer (they had just appeared on the market). I had my daughter, my dog and my “Hello Mum” sign roped to the trailer and was all set.
When the organisers saw me they tried to prevent me joining in but eventually allowed me to start when every runner in the race had gone. They were concerned I would cause an accident! We finished in under thirty nine minutes and the Canberra Times ran (no pun) this photo on the front page. The race certificate shows that Jordana, my daughter, beat me
concerned I would cause an accident! We finished in under thirty nine minutes and the Canberra Times ran (no pun) this photo on the front page. The race certificate shows that Jordana, my daughter, beat me by one second which is impressive considering I towed her over the line.
A few years later we were living on the Gold Coast. I ran the Half Marathon dressed (if that is the correct word? Attired?) in running shorts and a bow tie and carrying the tray of drinks.The watching crowd screamed and jeered like drunks at the footy.This reaction was the trigger for me to do more silly Half-marathons.
Each year it was a challenge to better the crowd reaction of the previous year. It was also a relief that I didn’t have the pressure of trying for a personal best time. The enthusiastic crowd reaction was a reward in itself. Tiger Woods was the world’s number one golfer atthe time so I attempted to lampoon him. I covered my tee shirt and golf bag and buggy with ticks like the Nike swoosh and entered as Jaguar Forest. Yeah, you’re correct! Not many got it, too obscure, but the crowd lapped it up when I hit a golf ball along the road one hundred metres from the finish and then went racing after it.
Santa Claus was a classic and it was fortunate that nobody could recognise me! Strange also that the runners standing waiting for the starters gun were obviously frightened or embarrassed as they avoided me with a ten metre space. Just for interest
the “presents in the sack” were large blocks of sponge. I didn’t know at the time but the official who planned and measured the Sydney Olympic Marathon was a guy from Canberra named Dave Cundy. He also managed the Gold Coast Marathon for years. He was on the microphone commenting at the finish and entertaining the crowd when Santa Claus came into sight with the crowd screaming and laughing with delight. I stopped to handout some little presents to watching kids then ran on when I heard “So we have Santa charging to the finish! This is July! What is Santa doing here? Huge applause everybody! Who is it under the white beard? John Wilson? John Wilson! I knew John Wilson years ago in Canberra and he was a nut case then!” I was laughing so hard I had extreme difficulty in reaching the finish!
The best thing about Fun Runs? Your time doesn’t matter and, best of all, you don’t have to run one hundred kms a week in training. So now I’m having a rest. I’ve promised myself to have a crack at the forty two km event again when I’m in the 80-85 age group. There certainly won’t be many running at this age so I’ll be hoping to win a medal for first in the silly old bastards category. Please give me a cheer if you are watching the race.
Gold Coast, March 2018
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