This is one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands. I’m sure Matt Skiba’s lyrics were intended to liken his feelings for a person to a drug addiction, but he was actually singing about running. He just doesn’t realise it.
And he is right of course. Running is an addiction. An addiction that millions of sufferers get away with having. No one tells us to seek treatment. No rehab, group therapy, counselling or self help books for us. In fact, running is probably the most socially acceptable form of addiction there is. Tell people you’re a smoker and depending on their level of tolerance, their reaction will vary from “me too, but I’m trying to quit” to “you disgusting human, get out of my face.” How many people express envy the plight of the homeless man clutching a bottle of white lightning at 7 in the morning? How many people genuinely think it’s cool to be at the mercy of some chemical? But if you tell someone you’re a runner their reaction wil be completely different. Suddenly people want advice and tips. They want to know what the secret is (though they are less thrilled when you tell them it’s all about running lots and running hard rather than a type of shoe or energy drink) and how to get good at it.
Now I appreciate that I have put a rather large flaw in my argument by likening running to drug and alcohol dependency. Running does at least have huge benefits in terms of maintaining a healthy heart and lungs. But in many ways it is just as damaging. The British marathon record holder Steve Jones has arthritis in his knees. Hip replacements are common and many who run in their twenties and thirties struggle to walk in their forties and fifties.
As well as the physical perils of being a running addict, there is the profound effect it has on the people around you. It is just as antisocial as being a smoker. Despite my warped perceptions of ‘normal’ that are proliferated by the runners I surround myself with, I realise some things aren’t normal. Running twice a day, avoiding social events and going to bed early because you have to run in the morning, drifting off at work because you are tired from that morning’s run or losing concentration because you’re just thinking about your evening run. And don’t even dare using the phrase “just ten miles easy this evening” in front of your colleagues. If you aren’t careful, these things can push the people around you away.
We all still seek that high though; the endorphin rush, the unrivalled satisfaction of bettering past performances or beating people you have never beaten before. We crave the feeling of worth and purpose that is provided for us by the simple act of putting left in front of right thousands of times. We get a rush from the giddy excitement of race day. We travel far and make huge sacrifices for a simple need. Running is a drug and most of my friends are hooked on it.
I could give up running if I wanted to. Definitely. I just don’t want to.
Yesterday evening I met up with a few runner friends and spent four hours in the pub putting the world to rights. The main topics of conversation were running and running, with the odd anecdote about running thrown in. OK, not strictly true; we did talk about other things but I can’t quite remember what they were.
One of the questions posed was which track world records were most likely to be broken in the near future. “Easy,” I said, stating the men’s marathon world record as the one with the shortest shelf life, before considering the actual question and remembering that the marathon is a road event and not run round a 400m oval.
We threw a few out there. Rob opened the bidding with a very creditable “men’s 800m,” an obvious but sensible choice given that the current record is only a year old and the man who set it, David Rudisha, is in his early twenties. I weighed in with a similarly obvious “steeplechase – men or women,” justified by the fact that the women’s event is fairly new and that Brimin Kipruto came within 0.01 seconds of the world record this summer on the men’s side.
The reason world records are held in such high esteem is that they are, well, actually bloody hard to set. Olympic gold aside, they are the pinnacle of athletic achievement and with this in mind it is obvious why we soon ran out of ideas. So naturally the conversation turned to the untouchables: the records that are out of sight of the current generation of athletes. We debated the women’s 100m world record of 10.49, set by Florence Griffith Joyner. Didn’t Jeter come pretty close a couple of years ago? (she did) Who do you think can break it then? (no one) Was she on drugs? (hang on now, let’s not go there).
We shared thoughts on the women’s 800m record, again set during times when drug and gender testing were not considered important elements of quality control in athletics. We were less willing to grant this one untouchable status by virtue of the fact that some athletes (Jelimo and Semenya) have come pretty close in recent years and are both still young.
At this point we turned our attentions to the current crop of female distance athletes and expressed our sympathy for them and their futile attempts to chase records well out of their reach. With the exception of Dibaba’s 5000m record, all these records were set during a time when women were men, men were on drugs, and drugs were not effectively tested for. Consider Qu Yungxia’s 3:50:46 for 1500 from the 1993 Chinese National Championships. No woman ran within 9 seconds of that this year. NINE seconds. That is over two seconds per lap.
We neglected to mention the women’s 3000m record of 8:06 last night too. The top four times ever were all set at the same national championships as the 1500 record. How can any woman today expect to compete with that time, set by Wang Jungxia? The fastest time this year was 8:38. The one record that did get a mention was the 10000m, also set by Wang. I will leave it to the reader’s imagination where and when that one was set, but will say that 29:31 is 22 seconds quicker than the next best time ever. Not even Paula Radcliffe broke 30 minutes, let alone run that fast.
My original aim when wiritng this was to group the records into some vague and ill informed categories along the lines of ‘broken soon,’ ‘next few years’ and ‘no chance.’ I even started typing them up, but then came to realise something. With a couple of exceptions, anything set by a woman on the track is untouchable. Don’t even bother. My advice to female track athletes is simple: enjoy the racing and try and beat your contemporaries because you sure ain’t going to beat the women of the past. I also noticed that no one is anywhere near the men’s 400, the men’s 1500 and mile or the men’s 3000, but that most of the others are fair game. Having said that, Bekele’s 10000 will not be broken any time soon, not for lack of individual talent or depth in distance running, but because anyone good enough in the next few years will step right up to the cash-rich marathon. The 25 lapper is dying out.
I love making predictions. They’re usually wrong. Watch this space.
Every other Wednesday I take a group of my students cycling. This week we were rolling through the countryside with me at the back of the pack and a student just ahead of me who is a decent 800m runner in his age group. From the other direction came two people running towards us on the other side of the road. They were working hard but not moving particularly fast, and the student in front of me said something along the lines of “pfft, joggers.”
I’m sure that this exclamation was in part related to the fact that he knows I run; indeed, we had spent most of the ride talking about training and racing. Perhaps he thought it was what I wanted to hear. Funny though it was, it reminded me that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard other runners being contemptfully labelled with the J word.
But why? Why are we not all one big happy running community? And besides, what’s wrong with jogging anyway? We all jog from time to time. Common running wisdom dictates that you alternate hard runs with easy runs to maximise the effect of your training. So why pour our scorn on joggers? By all means take the piss out of triathletes – they’re just weird, don’t hold back when taking a dig at fell runners – they’re just insane, and sprinters – well, all they do is stand around and lift weights. But the poor joggers. Leave them alone.
Maybe this resentment comes from a misguided belief that people who run slowly give a bad name to those who run fast, or a view that they simply aren’t trying hard enough and hence not paying enough respect to our oh-so-sacred sport. Even worse than this resentment is the runner’s fear that he or she will be branded a jogger by someone who doesn’t know better. We all get shouted at by non runners when pounding the tarmac and most of the insults bounce off us like water off a duck’s back, but for some the words ‘jog on’ or ‘keep jogging’ are the words they least like to hear.
This snobbery can sometimes extend to the use of ‘jogger’ as an insult. “He’s just a jogger” is just about the worst thing you can say about a fellow athlete. But by this logic, we are all joggers. Unless you are Mo Farah or Geoffrey Mutai, the two best athletes on the planet at the moment, there is someone in the world who could well unleash the J word upon you. One man’s runner is another man’s jogger. It’s how the sporting heirarchy works.
So with that in mind I salute the joggers of the world (after all, I am one of them) and urge you to think again next time you criticise a fellow athlete. You stupid jogger.
The track we train at on a Tuesday evening is full of quality athletes. National champions, world championships contenders, top cross country athletes, the lot. And how they show us up. It is not uncommon for someone doing exactly the same rep as you to start well after you and finish before you. Stepping subserviently out in to lane two is common practice. Lane three even feels the pounding of my feet when they train in big groups. Just when you think you’re working hard you will get passed by someone who seems to be bouncing effortlessly from left foot to right, making a mockery of your lousy 70 second laps. Occasionally you try to latch on to a group, then regret having deemed yourself worthy of the group’s company as you fall dejectedly off the back of it.
And yet this humiliation to which we regularly subject ourselves does us some good. It is helpful to be reminded that there are people who are much better than you. In my case, this spurs me on and makes me strive for improvement. I know what a good athlete is, and just as importantly I know that I am not one. The moment you start thinking you’re good is the moment you lose the urge to get better.
But how many of the athletes flying effortlessly past me on a Tuesday are thinking exactly the same thing? I suspect quite a few. Of course, they are comparing themselves to a different class of athlete, but probably still need the sense of inadequacy to motivate themselves. A 14 minute 5000m runner will always show me a clean pair of heels on the track, but will no doubt remind himself that there are men in the world who can lap him. A friend of mine always says that a good athlete should be embarrassed by his PBs, that you should feel uncomfortable when someone asks you what you do for 10k. Perhaps my internal dialogue should follow along these lines: Over 15 minutes for 5k? Why do you bother? More than 70 minutes for a half? A good athlete has showered and had breakfast by the time 70 minutes comes around. A 2:44 marathon, and you still show your face in public?
So runners of the world, without so much as a smirk on my face I tell you this: You should be ashamed of your times, you are not as good as you think you are, there are many people better than you and the only way you can change this is to work harder.
Something tells me I won’t be getting hired as a motivational speaker any time soon.