Run, Forest

There was a time when I ran cross-country races like it was going out of fashion. Perhaps that's because I knew it was about to do just that: for after my twelfth birthday, there would be no more competitive running. Doing what could be done incidentally, whether playing on a football pitch, dashing for a train, or fleeing from malicious, stink-bug wielding colleagues - was no longer cool. Run when necessary, of course. But fun-run? The greatest rhyming oxymoron in the English language.

Last Saturday, I discovered that competitive running is still - not very cool. I signed up for the 'College Cuppers Day' (hooray!), a 10km course around an idyllic Cambridgeshire wood. Thinking it could be a useful exercise to measure just how fit I really was, not to mention an interesting theatre I had never been involved in, I enlisted without further question. I showed up at the number collection point, pinned on my unique paper number, looked around, and realised I knew not a soul. People were milling in college groups; but I hadn't even bothered to check that other people from my college were running. Two hours to race time. I slouched against a handy wall and became more aware of my hangover. More aware, also, of my failure to bring book or music entertainment. So I pretended to read a map of the London tube, while my ears ventured hungrily around the room, searching for juicy snippets.

As a sidenote, snippets at Cambridge are nuggeted gold. I walked through King's bar the other day and overheard two. Snippet 1: '...it's like the signifier and the signified...'. Snippet 2: '...as Kant would say...'. Those were gems; but the race day conversation was not so high-brow. Still, it was no less standard for that. Academic self-deprecation translates easily to a sporting context. There were things like 'Oh god, this is the last place I want to be...' and 'I'm not ready for this, I shouldn't have drunk so much last night...'. Now there's modesty, and then there's Ms. Undergraduate doing her best to appear all worn-out and dejected. Come on, Ms. Undergrad. We both know you were in bed by 9pm last night. I'd breathalyse you now, but for fear that it would be more awkward in a context outside my imagination.

Anyway, these snippets were making me a little edgy. When Cambridge students energetically downplay stuff like that, you know they're taking it seriously. As time elapsed, and the relative locations of Victoria and Piccadilly Circus burnt into memory, more and more jackets came off, revealing more and more singlets: 'Jesus College Running', 'Team Trinity' etc. Coloured and themed. Well then. Enjoy your singlets, ladies and gents. I for one choose to run my races in my girlfriend's black tights, loose-fitting boardshorts, ragged gloves and a jacket with a phone-shaped hole in the front pocket. Speed-singlets may look good, but what I lack in professionalism, I make up for in sheer aerodynamism. We'll see who has the last laugh.

Needless to say I got comprehensively beaten. I came somewhere in the middle...all I know is that the winner beat my by six minutes. That's considerable, in a forty minute race. While it would have been wonderful to pull off a dark horse victory, I'd discounted that from the moment we arrived at the course. So, visualise a paddock, cow-patted and all, with a small grove of trees in the middle. People put down their bags (containing spikes and packed lunches), and start warming up. Safely back home, I now realise that this was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. Men and women in tracksuits getting warm in every conceivable way: sprints, jogs, legs-up, heels-up, stretches, push-ups, downhill, cross-hill. I walked the course (autumnal woodland - pleasant, if it were not about to be trampled) with some nice young lads, the conversation was flowing, until - 'Let's run this last bit then shall we?'. Running, running everywhere. I was alerted to how rare the run is in everyday life by its extreme concentration here. I had entered an asylum of running madpeople.

The race itself was even more bizarre. Comments made on the sporting field are fairly inane at the best of times. In football, there's necessary communication of course: 'pass it square', for example. But there's also the morale-boosting/general command shout, which probably constitutes a good proportion of the chatter on ground: 'Mark up!', 'First to the ball!', 'Save, keeps!' etc. Now, the range of possible expressions is reasonable in a game like football, where the competitors do different things and stuff actually happens. But in running? It would be make it sound more honourable than it actually is to say 'Wow, what a run he's having, he's putting one foot in front of the other and moving generally straight ahead so well today!'. As we circled the track, the spectators (all lady runners just finished their race) dug out two pearlers, which they mixed and matched in colourful combinations: 'Good running!' and 'Keep Going!'. Cheers...thank you, and I will.

I suppose the funniest element for me was just witnessing enthusiasm in action. At times I forget how many wonderful nerds there are out there, investing so much zeal in a very specific area. Yes, I know I do classics. Blind spot noted. But seeing people behaving so seriously towards something I was lazily indifferent about felt refreshing, and, well, 'fun'. Scarier is how quickly I found myself buying into the hot competition merely by absorbing a competitive environment. I set my target mid-race on this weedy little guy that was always just in front of me. I inched closer until I could hear him weezing. Then I strode past on the final lap. Another guy I passed said 'not you again'. The private battles and psychological conflicts, the highs, the lows. Running was the stuff of life. Good running, yes sir!

The adrenalin subsided, I almost vomited, downed some free biscuits, and went back home. Thinking, on the come-down, that competitive running affords a very quick route to uncoolness. Around forty minutes precisely; or thirty-four, if you're in a real hurry.