One overlong day, in the silly season between Christmas and New Year, I too easily persuaded myself to compete in a road-running race, starting on a modest incline from the river and ending bleakly on a knobbly tar road among the mealie fields of the northern Free State. If I was crossing a personal Rubicon, it was also an ideal setting for my athletic Waterloo.
My opponent in the race, 2km up the road and two back, was my libertarian friend, who happens to be a regular runner, all-round fit, and a non-smoker. I think, quite smugly, that his ideological prescriptions for social and economic challenges barely grasp the intangible outcomes of a tortured past, human psychology, and fate. Whatever, there are no easy solutions. Surely such fanciful notions could not beat me?
Societies are not that glibly changed, my friend, and the embrace of the modern is always compromised by the tenacity of harmful social norms. Did I think about all this as I tackled the first kilometre into the mealie fields? The hell I did, for my suffering by then was already immense and all-consuming.
Possibly because of my inner historian’s disdain for beguiling ideas of the libertarian type, I imagined that I would quite easily beat my friend in this Byronic — or moronic — escapade. I’d beaten him at other athletic endeavours (tennis and swimming), so I had no hesitation in assigning the winner’s medal to myself even as we measured the distance to be run by car, and it really didn’t seem that far.
In addition to not holding libertarian ideas and motives in especially high regard, I took strength from knowing that I had once, in some distant bronze-era past, been a long-distance runner of distinction. From an early age, I’d had the Gumpian urge to run far and mindlessly. For many years I trained morning and evening with a view to identifying as a champion miler.
OK, so I’d taken a break from running for half a century, I smoke as much as I can, normally getting through 20-plus, and I’ve got a stomach that could be an advantage if the race ended in a photo finish
Obviously, whatever I did to enhance my modest athletic ability was insufficient. A great athlete I did not become, but surely I had enough in the tank to humble a libertarian with smart-alec ideas that take all the fun and vengeful passion out of the new utopia, leaving us without an actual useless state to moan about while burning things?
Presumably, though, the supposed historian in me had quite forgotten that though I ran at a fair clip as a teenager, I was now 50 years older. At 66, one is among the oldest transient objects on earth. How many things at 66 or older still have any utility today, and I’m excluding the Voortrekker Monument, and attract anything like the excitement they may once have?
OK, so I’d taken a break from running for half a century, I smoke as much as I can, normally getting through 20-plus, and I’ve got a stomach that could be an advantage if the race ended in a photo finish. About five paces into the duel (make that eight for my libertarian friend) I realised I had as much chance of winning as Donald Trump has of being invited to a chisanyama at the Union Buildings.
The pain I felt in what I presumed to be calves was electrifying to say the least, and I could barely shuffle one foot forward, and then the next, as the dismal and deeply embarrassing display of hubris unfolded. Yes, I could accept that I could barely run anymore, but the more bitter pill was trying to understand my judgment on this quite revealing exercise (excuse the pun). What had I been thinking? Had my powers of delusion increased in inverse proportion to my powers of the mildest ambulation? I accepted my defeat with graceless resignation.
You know that feeling when you want to ask Google, “What the f*** is wrong with me?”, well I tried that with running. “Why can’t I run anymore, at age 66?” Fair question, I thought. “Sarcopenia”, old boy, the wasting away of one’s muscles brought on by the “new smoking”, which is sitting, and in my case sitting and smoking.
I asked Google again, “How can I run faster?” Because we’re having a rematch in April, and I intend to win this time, albeit after lots of training and introspection and stewing over my past defeat even as certain victory awaits.
Says Google AI on how to run faster: “Invest in a good pair of running shoes.” Which, let’s not deny, is astonishingly good advice, and I can well appreciate such wisdom as the bounty of the greatest minds of our times.
I’ll be pondering that while I pound the road in my cheap Chinese knock-offs.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.