It’s just gone midnight in Waterford and I’m not long in from another of those late night runs I’ve come to refer to in recent weeks as my “anti-socials”.
Running while there’s pretty much no-one else in sight was a pattern I developed when I first moved to Waterford city in late 2006, and it’s one I’ve resumed with a real sense of purpose over the past year.
By sheer coincidence, I find myself running along most of the same routes I did during my first stint of city living; the mix of flat and relatively pleasant inclines providing me with the ideal terrain to regain fitness that I’d largely lost.
In fact, I was so out of shape as recently as late December 2018 that I couldn’t run a single mile without stopping. There are few greater obstacles to face down in life than those that have been self-imposed – and the only way to avoid having an oversized arse is to move it a bit more. So that’s what I did.
With my 40th birthday then some seven months away, and a principal role in a musical to come my way in the early stages of the New Year, I had additional motivation to revive my mobility levels. So I got running again, started eating a little better and soon began to reap the benefits.
However, it’s really only been since the public health emergency began that my night runs have become a truly revived habit – and I’ve largely enjoyed it.
A job like mine involves substantial periods of sitting, something which has done nothing for both my posture or waistline.
And while the setting of my work has undergone a fundamental course correction, if anything I’m busier now than what I was back in those pre-Covid days, hence my lack of posting on this particular forum of late. That increased output had made exercise all the more important, meaning I walk our dogs two to three times daily and try to run three to five times a week.
Given the Government’s initial exercise radius recommendation, the loop that I regularly ran on during a time in my life when I was still playing rugby for Carrick-on-Suir became well-trodden territory once more.
The benign weather has certainly provided an additional incentive when it comes to fastening my runners and heading out onto my four-mile (6.4k) loop but having preferred cross-county running to the track in my teens, a drop of rain has never acted as a deterrent for me.
And on Thursday night, in the sort of driving rain we’ve had so little of in recent months, off I went, during a run in which I didn’t see another single human being. And I don’t think I could have been happier.
When I got back home and dried myself off, I stuffed my runners with some of the April 4th edition of The Irish Times and opted against scrunching up Ian O’Riordan’s running column, which primarily focused on correct running form, something I’ve never had.
“No amount of conscious effort to run with the legs, not on them, will create the correct running style unless the hips are correctly positioned,” wrote Ian, whom I’ve regularly shared a press box with over the years.
“Bill Bowerman, the co-founder of Nike, spelled it out plainly for his students at the University of Oregon, including Steve Prefontaine. The hips, Bowerman said, must be held up and forward at all times, ‘as if in the moment of deepest penetration’.” I can safely state at this juncture that the physical act of love has rarely, if ever been a thought of mine when puffing out my cheeks in the closing stages of a 10K.
Indeed, the only habit I’ve amended during these pandemic times has been to desist from spitting while out running. And now that I’m not doing it, I’m wondering why I did so for so much of the previous 27 years, even if most it was directed into a roadside ditch.
I’ve never consciously been a loner yet there are clearly pursuits I’ve developed and remained attached to which can be conducted and honed on a solitary basis.
In fact, I appear to have a lifelong predilection towards solitary activities: drawing and reading as a kid, running and signing in my mid-teens and, ultimately writing through which I’ve earned a crust for 21 years. I was a proud team member across three different codes between 1987 and 2014 but my most consistent level of sporting success came through running between 1994 and 1997.
I was never remotely talented enough to wear a national vest; the height of my representative acumen arriving in November 1996 when I was part of the Munster team which competed in the All-Ireland Under-17 Cross Country Championship.
The previous summer, I’d clocked 9 minutes 36 seconds when finishing ninth in the All-Ireland 3,000-metre Final at Morton Stadium in Santry and broken the 30-minute barrier for five miles during John Treacy’s retirement race in October 1995.
Despite my less than aesthetic running gait, I gave running my all during those happily competitive years and there’s little doubt that my regular 11k runs to my then girlfriend’s home in South Kilkenny played a huge part in my lung building development.
The fact that I’ve clocked a 7:30 mile in the past month has come as a pleasant surprise to me, an unexpected benefit of this out of the ordinary window in living history. Last October, I took part in the 10K Run For Life, a massive annual fundraiser for the Solas Cancer Support Centre, a facility I now past most evenings. I completed the distance in 48 minutes, which came as a delightful surprise for someone who’d been running on fumes only 10 months prior to that.
Running for my well-being at almost 41 is as rewarding to me today as running to compete at national championship level was in my teens. I’ve got two marathons under my belt (Cork in 2010 and Edinburgh in 2011) and while I’ll no desire to ever run that distance again, I’ll not rule it out. If I do so, it will have to be in the hope that I could clock in at four hours or under. We’ll see.
Ian O’Riordan’s April 4th column concluded with a quote from the great Noel Carroll who said: “If you find yourself too busy to run on any given day, then you’re too busy.” How right he was. I’m back in love with running. Long may that remain the case.
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