The runner's world

As I’ve previously alluded too, the runner’s world is a slightly mad one. 

Full of things which – in the normal world – are completely taboo.

These include inappropriately tight shorts, inappropriately short shorts, stretching limbs into weird poses in public, voluntarily getting up early on Sundays to run (madness), choosing cereal and bananas over 3 cups of coffee as a suitable weekend breakfast (complete madness), Vaseline-ing nipples/inner thighs (on long runs) and emptying ones nose in public.

It’s all very wrong.

Some of these things you have no choice but to buy into. The stretching limbs bit is unavoidable, especially when all the energy is running out of your legs. It's amazing how much you can get a sudden release of extra energy from pausing for 2mins to stretch your hamstrings out. Although I have learnt that using a park bench for this is acceptable, but people tend to give you looks if you use tombstones in a churchyard (which is annoying because the one's in Putney Bishops Gate Park church yard are perfect).

Voluntarily getting up early to run is also unavoidable, as it's the best part of the day to run and allows you to get on with the rest of the day ahead, with the added bonus of feeling very smug and virtuous.

Ditto re the cereal and bananas over coffee. I don't think there's any need to dwell on the vomiting-coffee-on-a-memorial-statue-of-Queen-Victoria incident in Berwick over Christmas.

The one I refuse to buy into are the inappropriately tight stretchy short shorts. Wrong Wrong Wrong. I don't care if they support your hamstrings, keep you warm, allow your skin to breath and reduce chaffing, they should still be illegal. Or at the very least they should legislate that if you are going to wear them, you should have to wear baggy shorts over them to hide the detail. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And don't get me started on the runners who decide to clear their noses with the ol' thumb-to-one-nostril-and-blow technique... in public. Whilst running. And with little regard for anybody in the near vicinity. Gross and wrong. 

Although i did see a sunday walker's little dog be on the receiving end of this technique and the look on the owner's face as the runner flew by was enough to make me laugh. So maybe there is an upside to it.

It did occur to me afterwards that this was intentional by the runner. Runner's tend to fall into two categories: polite runners and rude runners. If you're polite, you let people know you're stuck behind them / their prams / their dogs with a polite breathless 'scuse me' and 'thanks' as you puff by.

Rude runners grunt loudly to announce their presence, push through anyway, sometimes swear at the the walkers, splash in a puddle as they pass and - if the walker has a cute fluffy little dog - evidently clear their noses on it for good measure.

I'm only a rude runner during the last 15mins of a run when my sense of humour, patience and energy has gone AWOL. I'll admit to grunting past people coz the thought of finding the energy to actually pronounce a word is impossible and have occasionally 'accidentally' splashed the odd puddle which will hopefully remind them to move quicker next time, but i draw the line at the nose clearing thing. So far anyway.

Maybe that'll change when i have to do my first 20k run a week sunday.

So if you're intending to go for a nice gentle walk on Sunday 8th Feb, you might want to avoid the west london Thames pathway. Or at least leave your dogs at home...