My Performance at Running

Apart from running around a football or cricket pitch, my first memory of running was when I started at Braintree County High School at the age of fourteen. At one of the early games lessons, we had to run around the school grounds. I was one of those who walked after a hundred yards. I was no runner.

But when I went into the sixth form, we had a new games master. His background (in 1962) was in basketball. I really liked the game, but if I wanted to join the team, I had to do the dreaded circuit training. Sit ups with a medicine ball behind your neck, bench presses from them hanging from the top of the wallbars, etc etc. By the time I went into my last year in sixth form, I think I had got fitter.

The school always had a cross country race, and everyone had to do it. In my penultimate year, I must have walked a lot. But in my final year, something very strange happened. After a normally sluggish start, I found I kept running. And even towards the end, overtaking two of my fellow classmates who had done really well the year before. It's amazing what some training can do.

But even this achievement had it's downside. The school entered me for the Mid Essex Cross Country Championships. I was unprepared for the distance, conditions and pace of proper runners, and came in at the back. I thought that was it. But no. Come the summer, I was bullied into representing the school again, this time in the Mid Essex Athletics Championships. There was nobody to run the 100m high hurdles, so that was me. And high does not start to describe how I felt about these enormous barriers. In training, I could hardly clear one, never mind all ten. On the day there were only three in the senior race, and the adrenalin must have carried me through to at least finish and get my certificate for third place, and points for the school. Never again.

I cannot remember why, in 1985, I started running again. Living in High Wycombe, I would take myself down to The Rye on a nice summer evening and jog around the park. The problem was I had no advice or trainer, and found after a while that I could run for a couple of miles and go no further. Probably just out of breath. This barrier seemed to put me off, and I gave up. I had my swimming and thought that was enough.

So when I started running again last year, having been swimming for the intervening twenty five years, the breathing was never a problem. And with wife Alison, I had a great coach. So now I run three times a week and looking forward to my first ten mile race on Good Friday. At my age, I still find this quite surreal.