Running FAIL

This is a public health warning, and also a direct response to the running joy chronicled my friend Steve over at Blood, Sweat and Running Shoes…

Running is hazardous.  To the health and the ego. 

I am supposed to be training for a half marathon in June 2010, the same half marathon as Steve (or Mr BSRS) is successfully training for.  However, unlike Mr BSRS, I’m a lazy slattern who doesn’t believe in exercise when I actually have to do it. 

Conversely however, I am also an extremely competitive individual, and the thought of a friend of mine completing while I bail out, is almost too much for me to bear. 

So, on Wednesday evening – worried by thoughts of failure, and guilt tripped by the BSRS blog – I managed to squeeze my corpulent frame into a my running gear and out onto the street to attempt (what is known in the trade as) a ‘training run’.

I was doing well – very well in fact – for the first half a mile at least, until I tripped over something and became rather vertically challenged.  Who knows what I tripped on – it was dark. It could have been a stone or a bit of kerb, or perhaps it was own fat feet, but all I do know is that one minute I was feeling quietly smug at my exercise prowess, and the next I was eating gravel. 

As I limped home with a grazed elbow, two grazed hands, two grazed and bruised knees, and dented dignity, I couldn’t help but feel that I would have been better off staying at home with a cup of tea and a bit of cake.  (And I also wondered if this is what my friend meant when he named his blog ‘Blood, Sweat and Running Shoes’)

So Steve – matey – you can keep the moral highground…go on…keep it…while I try and work out a way that I can  finish this 13 mile race – while not necessarily faster than you – at least in one piece…