Wednesday, August 16, 2006
I just signed up to run a half-marathon in Basel in September! I am scared shiteless.
Running was always something I dreaded and deplored as a child. In gym class, they would make us run and run for what seemed like ages (though was probably only about 800 meters). I was a rather corpulent child, and was under pressure from the twigs around me to keep up, or I would be ridiculed. I was ridiculed anyway, but I still somehow felt obliged to prove myself, at all costs. After about two laps around the school-sanctioned torture chamber, the room would start spinning, my then-undiagnosed asthma caused me to wheeze and gasp for air, and I had to stop running, thus increasing the humiliation as the two-legged slicks breezed by, thinking they were something special.
Well, guess what? I've faced my fears, and decided my 30th birthday present to myself would be to start running. I've worked up to 10km with gas to spare, but I've never attempted a 21km run before. Ever. And I'll bet that most of the stick kids I went to school with have done that either. If only I could go back in time and tell myself how the world really is, and how one can excel without the ability to sprint laps like an automaton around that stinky hell room where I had to spend 90 minutes a week feeling like less of a person than I already did in the school hallway.
Now when I go back to Nelson (when I have time off from performing with world-class artists in international opera houses), I can see those little twig people I went to school with. Their bark has gotten thinker over the years, and their heads aren't doing much better. (Side note: these are the same wankers who didn't invite me to my own class reunion. They said they couldn't find me. Since my mother's address and telephone number haven't changed since I was 5, I can only assume they didn't look too hard.) I wish I could challenge them to a few laps around the LVR gym. Let's see who's the fat ass now!
Kevin
Running was always something I dreaded and deplored as a child. In gym class, they would make us run and run for what seemed like ages (though was probably only about 800 meters). I was a rather corpulent child, and was under pressure from the twigs around me to keep up, or I would be ridiculed. I was ridiculed anyway, but I still somehow felt obliged to prove myself, at all costs. After about two laps around the school-sanctioned torture chamber, the room would start spinning, my then-undiagnosed asthma caused me to wheeze and gasp for air, and I had to stop running, thus increasing the humiliation as the two-legged slicks breezed by, thinking they were something special.
Well, guess what? I've faced my fears, and decided my 30th birthday present to myself would be to start running. I've worked up to 10km with gas to spare, but I've never attempted a 21km run before. Ever. And I'll bet that most of the stick kids I went to school with have done that either. If only I could go back in time and tell myself how the world really is, and how one can excel without the ability to sprint laps like an automaton around that stinky hell room where I had to spend 90 minutes a week feeling like less of a person than I already did in the school hallway.
Now when I go back to Nelson (when I have time off from performing with world-class artists in international opera houses), I can see those little twig people I went to school with. Their bark has gotten thinker over the years, and their heads aren't doing much better. (Side note: these are the same wankers who didn't invite me to my own class reunion. They said they couldn't find me. Since my mother's address and telephone number haven't changed since I was 5, I can only assume they didn't look too hard.) I wish I could challenge them to a few laps around the LVR gym. Let's see who's the fat ass now!
Kevin
