Abubilla Music

Tip of the Day: 10.03.15 Runnin’ in Richmond Park, part 1

Written by Jimmy

First, I ran a Marathon under four hours.  I want to say that before I tell you the rest. Because the rest isn’t pretty.  It is a story of two parts…

At exactly the time of the ‘ball thing,’, St Kathy had breast cancer.  Scary stuff but all worked out fine.  We called our Christmas letter that year, ‘The Story of Boobs and Balls.’    We had two very different reactions to adversity.   I felt sorry for myself.  She decided she was mortal and therefore went on a ridiculous fitness regime.  

Now, I view this as a fairly big betrayel.  When I met her she said she hated running.  I liked running at the time.  And it was quite fun to ask her to go running with me and watching her suffer.   But after the boob thing, she starts running a lot.  She gets hooked up with this ex-SAS, parachute-scuba diving-karate-ultimate-fighting fitness guy and spends two days a week with a lot of local mums running thru the mud.  And Sunday mornings.   And she gets ridiculously fit.

At about the same time, in my own reaction to mortality, I decide to do this music thing.  Which involves a lot of sitting in a very comfortable black chair.  And it involves eating nuts and drinking diet cokes.  And sometimes I need to coil cables.  But I can do that sitting down, watching TV.   So we’d talk to each other on Sunday mornings, with Kathy covered in mud and me covered in salt and shells.  Both adjusting to our newly discovered mortality in our own way.

This goes on for a while.   I was under the assumption that one’s role in a relationship was directly proportional to weight and therefore felt things were going extremely well as I was clearly heading for global dominance.  Kathy asserted the ‘one man one vote rule,’ and after trying and failing to assert a literal interpretation to the phrase, the voting began.  It was a hung parliment, but the overall sentiment was that I had to start running with her and lose the ‘studio nuts.’  I thought she was referring to the band and fought nobly for Martyn, but realised it was about the salty snack food.  

So, before even considering going into ‘the park’ with her, I start running on the treadmill at the gym.   And I go thru that truly humiliating phase where your speed is so low that you jog for a bit and then walk without actually adjusting the speed.  Folks to my left and right are ‘cooling off’ to my speed.  I can read the FT.  I can re-tie my shoes if the laces come undone. We’re talking really slow.  So slow that over 20 minutes the ‘tread’ rotates maybe 4 times.  I know because i drew a chalk line to see what happenned.  And the little line came up four times over 20 minutes.  That is pretty slow.

But after a while, you start getting better.  I was going fast enough that it was hard to turn the pages of the FT.  The chalk line came up 8 or 9 times during a session.  I could still walk at my running speed, but at a somewhat brisk pace.  And then the FT was no longer feasible.   I had to read the Economist.   And it became harder to re-tie my shoes while the treadmill was one.  And so it was time to go with St Kathy to the park.

The first thing I tried and failed to do was use Lewie for support. He’s the ridiculously small hamster sized ‘dog’ we have called a cock a poo.   There’s a lot of bad things about this thing, but the really good thing about him is he can’t walk very far.  Gets tired.  And gets all cold.  The perfect running partner I thought.  So I suggest we bring little Lewie with us for the first run.  She kind of saw thru me on that but said we could bring Toby. 

Crap.  Toby is the other ridiculous dog we have.  But he’s been to Richmond Park every day of his life.  And he’s ridiculously fit.  Runs all the time between little deer poo piles. Likes to roll in the stuff.    I suggest the cat.  No.   Just us and Marathon Dog.

So, into the park.  We agreed a ‘system.’  It involves me ‘running’ at a steady pace.  It involves St Kathy sticking with me for a minute or so and then running a head to ‘a station’ (bench, tree, deer poo pile for the dog’s benefit) and doing a set of exercises and waiting for me to join her.   So I’m tortouie.  And she’s the little hare flitting about stration to station.  The good news is I get to suggest the exercise she has to do at next station.   And I indirectly control reps because I have some control over the time it takes me to reach her doing exercises.   I say some control, because I would never be able to actually go faster.  Only have a ‘downshift’. 

And a plan develops.  I run at my fastest clip for the minute we’re together, forcing Kathy to actually put down her magazine and pay attention.  She then sprints off to first station with my suggestion that she does press ups.   She goes off eagerly, silly woman.  I then ‘downshift’.  Now for most of the world, this would involve a relatively inperceptible slow down in speed, but for me it is dramatic.  A radical shift from jog-walking to walking-jog (where you’re walking but you move your arms like you’re jogging).

And so, except for moving arms, I almost come to a stand still.  It is a remarkable thing.  Man, on a path in Richmond park, moving arms back and forth in a sprinting frenzy, but leaving his legs out of the whole fitness equation.  No distance covered.  No movement at all.  And I stare directly at St Kathy at her station 100 metres ahead. And my arms flap.  And she does press ups.  And my arms flap.  And she does more press ups, waiting for my arrival.   And my arms flap.  And she does more press ups, but slower now.  And my arms flap, but I move no closer.  St Kathy looks up from press ups to see where I am and trusts me… assuming poor little Jimmy is coming as fast as he can.  So she does more press ups.  And my arms flap, but i  stand comfortably where I am.  And she does more press ups.   And then stops.  Panting and exhausted…

And that is Part 1 of this fitness story.  Jimmy remains sweat free in the park, fit as a fiddle.  St Kathy is exhausted from her press ups.  One man one vote my ass.