39+1

As featured in issue #35 of LikeTheWind magazine.

It’s not even noon but already the incessant tinny dings, bings and tunes ring out from the amusement arcades, I’ve already spent 80p just to twice ‘enjoy’ the facilities of the porcelain palace and the aroma of fried donuts, hot dogs - and pretty much anything else you could submerge in oil at 350 degrees fahrenheit - fill the air at reprehensibly regular intervals. 

It’s just days before my 39th birthday and we’re taking in the ‘beauty’ of the Scarborough’s South Bay seafront. 

My wife is jovially adamant she’ll one day possess one of the fleece pullovers hung outside the ‘shit shop’ - a painted howling wolf emblazoned across the rear. Laughing, she offers me a £1 coin for the gumball-style machine vending men’s ‘pouches’ - a sight no one would wish to see, and the sporting of which would likely see me banished from the beach on grounds of gross indecency.

A small child, impressively balancing an ice cream, tray of chips AND a colossal luminous lollipop loudly clatters past as we reach the fourth souvenir retailer in as many minutes. There, on the dusty rack between the plastic pinwheels and the battered ‘love meter’ machine (remember them?!),  sat a legion of oversized ceramic mugs, their sun-bleached state suggesting them to be the very same I walked past as a child. Each declared an oh-so-witty slogan -  ‘Life’s A Beach’ and ‘Kiss Me Quick’, but it was the one I’d probably seen a thousand times before that immediately caught the eye - ‘Life Begins at 40’.

What utter bollocks.

I was enchanted by this very seafront as a youngster - going to Scarborough was like going to Vegas. Perhaps things have changed, or perhaps my perception of Scarbados has altered over the past nearly-four decades. I still enjoy the seaside town, but am now more endeared by the opposing bay at the other end of town - quieter, greener and with the starkly contrasting absence of strobe neon, subconscious-penetrating jingles, and questionable dining delights. 

Like so many others, I found running after the epiphany - in my late 20s - that there was perhaps more to life than the pub, booze and allowing a perpetually mediocre lower-league football club to dictate my everyday mood and demeanour. I still enjoy such things, albeit in a condensed fashion - I enjoy a drink and still harbour a deep affection for my (still dire) team but neither appear to provide the sense of wellbeing, purpose or achievement that running has bestowed. 

My initial years of running were like everyone else’s - a new found energy, PBs every other week and blissful over-fervor (and ignorance) for this new shiny hobby. I’d be running the streets within 15 minutes of waking, or nailing track sessions with eager enthusiasm after work. Frequent, vastly-non-essential retail purchases of completely unnecessary gadgets and garments were commonplace - if it’s ‘research-backed’ and ‘athlete endorsed’ it must be amazing right? Right??  

I’d love the hype and atmosphere of the mass participation, big-city events. If it was big, loud, bright and I could shout about it then I was all-in 100%. No pain, no gain, and every other cliche going…

We recently took our youngest daughter, now four, to her first Junior parkrun, where she inevitably got incredibly animated and excitedly hurtled from the start, weaving in screams of thrill and hilarity, naive to the reality that she’d soon be, to quote her directly, “out of puff”. Figuratively speaking, my early running days were just the same. Though her infantile state provided an excuse, whereas I was about 20 years further down the line.

I turn 40 next year and, it’s perhaps safe to say, things have toned down somewhat. To some, namingly my teenage eldest daughter - 40 is ANCIENT. A relic. Life was apparently in black and white when I was her age. To others, 40 isn’t even half way there, and my nonsense musings are naive, ignorant and I’m still ‘wet behind the ears’ . They’re correct of course, I haven't a clue, but I guess it’s all relative. 

I haven’t ran a PB this side of the pandemic, and with that exception it’s been, despite a diligent training investment throughout, an exceptional drought across all distances since 2016. I live on the past glory of a marathon PB set so long (and so many attempts) ago that even I’m a bit sick of thinking about it now. I’ll still run six days a week but the thought of doing ANYTHING after work, even just a short trot, is ludicrously unlikely. Circumstance and personal preference see me get up at 4am to run but it’s much later by the time I’m out of the door - both psychologically and physiologically I need a coffee with 45 minutes of swinging my limbs around (under the guise of ‘warming up’) before I’m deemed ready to leave the house - a period which can sometime eclipse the duration of the actual run itself.

Other than a pair of shoes twice a year, and some new warm, high visibility garments for the winter (the desire for comfort and safety, another illustration of my age), I’ll very rarely invest in any new gear - now wiser to the nonsense marketing campaigns and the ‘science-backed independent studies’ which, when you delve below the surface, actually consisted of a miniscule sample size, and were coincidentally funded up the very same company attempting to shift the product.

‘Sessions’ are a rarity, most days are just (very) steady recovery jogs - the multitude of injuries, some serious, over the past decade have necessitated the expulsion of the hard stuff too often - I just can’t hack it anymore. I’m still sometimes suckered into the bigger races though- the lure and perceived prestige of extravagant events causing an amnesia of pained pursuits past - the onerous logistics of just getting there, the inflated accommodation, queues at every turn, and the fact the entry fee can often exceed £4-a-kilometer. 

Life begins at 40? When just rising from bed is a labour and descending the stairs without discomfort has become an increasingly rare occurrence, I beg to differ. If I’ve overindulged and undergone a prolonged period (translate; Christmas) consuming less-than-nutritious fare, it’ll be months to get back on track, when previously a mere few weeks of vegetables and a focus on proper food would have been sufficient to lose 7 pounds. The same can be applied to reaching for some form of race-fitness. They say that “if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it”, but what happens when the stuff that worked before doesn’t work now? The hunger and desire is still there but the engine isn’t perhaps quite what it once was, and the wide avenues so successfully explored in the past are now desolate cul-de-sacs. Dead ends.

Or perhaps my maturing state brings with it a detriment of cynicism, and in reality, things - when looking at the bigger picture - aren’t actually anywhere near as bad as they seem. If we remove the almost materialistic focus on times, PBs, events and the like, the broader perspective - one created through a persistence in our sporting pastime, is one of much greater value. Health, confidence, happiness, self-esteem - all positive benefits of physical activity - gifts of holistic wellbeing. They’re the real rewards of running, of which you’ll read about in great detail in these pages in each and every issue of LTW.

The even better news is, I’m not alone, (though I’m aghast at these blokes in their 70s running a 2:30 marathon - hope for us all yet?) no-one can outrun old Father Time, but we can learn from the words and experiences of others - those fighting the same battles, with whom we can relate and learn, to keep the clock ticking for as long as possible.

Fortunately, such pearls of wisdom are available in abundance. 

I’ve an affection for a saying, passage or proverb from yesteryear, not the modern-day “let’s do this / smash it / etc”, but those snippets of dialogue from when I were a lad, particularly those from a seemingly profound source - and even more so when they're relatable. Being a child of the 80s, male and a sports fan, I (stereotypically) adore the Rocky movies, and appreciate that as the legacy grew older, so did the leading character and his story. There’d be no senior citizen portraying a figure thirty years his younger, and I very much appreciate that. In the closing scene of the third instalment of the franchise, an exchange between Rocky and his adversary-turned-ally Apollo Creed sees the pair discussing their preceding rivalry when Creed states “It’s too bad we gotta get old eh?”. Rocky snickers and responds “just keep punching Apollo”. 

Just keep punching. Things won’t be what they once were, the seasons will change and we’ll grow old, but we all have the choice to keep punching. It won’t be our best but it’ll be the best we’ve got right now. 

In another third cinematic offering - the animated Disney trilogy - Cars 3 - sees a segment of dialogue between ageing superstar racer Lightning McQueen and the even older, more experienced 1940s pickup truck - Smokey Yunick. McQueen, in the twilight of his career and fearful of a younger, faster opponent is told by his new ally - “you’ll never be the racer you once were. You can’t turn back the clock kid, but you can wind it up again.” 

That’s what we do every morning. Wind it back up again. The extent of the warm-up may now surpass the exercise itself, be it a steady saunter or strenuous session, and greater obstinance be demanded to stave off the coughs, colds and ailments that were once easily brushed aside, but the furnace within still burns. 

A contingent that aren’t relatable however, are professional athletes. Every step out of the door, or onto the track appears to be undertaken with grace. They obviously don’t suffer such doubts, aches and pains as the rest of us sloggers, nor begin most mornings needing an liberal application of WD40 just to get the cogs moving. Or so it would seem - sometimes the facade slips and we see behind the curtain. Des Linden, born just a month before me and huge underdog winner of the 2018 Boston Marathon tweeted a passage with which we can all relate - “Some days it just flows and I feel like I’m born to do this, other days it feels like I’m trudging through hell. Every day I make the choice to show up and see what I’ve got, and to try and be better. My advice: keep showing up”.

Her ‘some days’ might be my ‘once-in-a-blue-moon days’, and I imagine myself to spend much greater time on the highway to hell, but my goodness, she couldn’t have put it better.

So what do we do? We stock up on our glories - and whilst our definitions of success may evolve, they’ll be all the sweeter. The fast times may be behind us - the personal triumphs more infrequent and our strengths of yesterday now elusive, but we’ll learn to celebrate those rare wins - everyone has a different victory. 

For me, it’s the simplicity of those spectacular Spring mornings, the deserted 5am country roads, when the fog makes way for glorious sunrise and my stride lengthens into an effortless gallop - the years of toil, sacrifice and slog were worth it. I’ve earnt the right to be there.

Life begins at 40?  Sometimes running makes me feel like a child again, oblivious that soon I’ll be “out of puff”.

Keep showing up, wind the clock back up, and just keep punching.

Keep on keepin’ on.