Mad Man Running

The unwanted Christmas gift from parkrun....

Sadly, the parkrun results database doesn’t lie and also, despite my efforts and support from the cyber-hacking gangs I enlisted, neither can it be easily expunged. So, it is now a matter of public record that the 2004 Christmas Day parkrun was a massive, festive wake up call for me. Technically, and irrespective of whether I had been naughty or nice in the previous 12 months, the history books show that on 25^th December 2004 my 9-year-old daughter crossed the line ahead of me in the Bushy Park parkrun. Not that this was easy for her, trust me, I chased her all the way to the finish line. We are technically credited with exactly the same time, but the judgement call on the day was that she had crossed the line fractionally ahead of me. I realise now that I should never have let that result stand. An immediate appeal should have been lodged with the two men and their proverbial dog sheltering under a tree from the rain and handing out the numbered tokens, as they did in those days. Then, if no satisfaction there, it should have been upwards to British Athletics and, if the result was still not in my favour, a date with the Court of Arbitration for Sport scheduled.

This was a Christmas present I hadn’t been expecting, but it was one that I couldn’t return. It slowly dawned on me that the sedentary corporate life, with copious client entertaining and dinners, had finally caught up with me. Indeed, this had allowed a child, only recently pushed around Bushy Park in her pushchair, to beat me in a straight running race over 5,000 metres. Me, a 43-year-old ex-PE teacher, beaten over 5 kilometres by a small thing, half my size and with a highly preferable BMI to my own. Mind you, the weight of evidence was probably against me beating her that day, as there was significant visual confirmation that my weight had settled in all the wrong places, thanks to the culinary delights of hosting regular dinners for my advertising clients.

I am fully aware that parkrun is not about racing, it’s about community and a place where the fleet of foot and those who just want to move across 5k in whatever way they can, come together. Nevertheless, there was clearly a message being sent to me that day. And if anyone for a moment doubts that the running gods had clearly put a hex on me, this was the 13^th parkrun ever held, and I am going to ask you to think for a moment about the implausibility of my finish position. Yes, you’re right, 13^th. So quite clearly, I had been bad in those previous 12 months. There are those in my family that feel my curse was self-inflicted by my refusal, up to that point, to let my young daughter beat me across the parkrun finish line. But there was familial pride at stake here and, whilst I couldn’t complete the distance chatting constantly as she could, I still felt I had the edge. Call me cruel if you like, but I wasn’t going to gift her the victory. Despite the disapproving looks from spectators in the past as I had beaten her to the line with my trademark sprint, I knew her ultimate victory was coming. I just hadn’t banked on that happening so soon.

I do still remember that the turkey with all its trimmings tasted just a little bit less appetizing that day. I contemplated that my exercise regime was probably sufficient, but my calorie intake was somewhat out of control. Mind you, as the director responsible at various points of my advertising agency career for clients like Walkers Crisps, Smirnoff, Cadbury and Bacardi, I had always believed I needed to lead from the front by devouring significant portions of my clients’ products. Perhaps I was also guilty of feeling that 9 years of both eating and expounding the virtues of Shredded Wheat had left me with an air of invincibility and a touch of that Ian Botham arrogance, for those that remember the campaign.

Anyway, my new year’s resolution wasn’t hard to alight upon that year. Whilst some of that weight still sits where it was, resolutely unprepared to shift, I can confidently say my diet has, by and large, improved significantly in the subsequent years. However, far more important was the other present I was given on that chilly Christmas morning when I was humbled by a 9-year-old in what passed for children’s running attire back in those days. The realisation that I had the greatest imaginable gift. The gift of a daughter who could beat me if she wanted to, but chose to chat her nonsense as well as her ideas and dreams on our many happy runs in the years to come. It’s not unusual for anyone to identify “family” as their greatest treasure, but within the dynamics of the three great loves of my life, there has always been a special affection and joy brought about by being able to run with my daughter. 21 years later, although the occasions are fewer (I had to let her leave home at some point), whether in town, on a towpath or across fields, running with that 9-year-old who ruined my Christmas all those years ago, still fills my heart with joy

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