The Fat Bloke Diaries
Episode Forty-
I’ve never understood the attraction
of finding my legs unexpectedly higher than my head. Even less enticing is landing
on my behind / back / head with a painful bump.
For this reason I don’t run in icy conditions. I don’t like running on any surface
that might cause me to slip, which is why this weekend’s Big Run filled me with a
little trepidation.
I’ve been jogging for a while now and have built up quite a little
portfolio of circuits around the bit of South Yorkshire where I live. To keep things
interesting I run these loops in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions, and
have recently taken to combining them into longer routes in preparation for my upcoming
10k road race. This explains why I found myself running up both the dreaded Hill
of Doom and Gravel Hill in one training session this week. It would be my last long
run before I start winding down towards the 10k. I wouldn’t want to see all my hard
work ruined due to an avoidable injury at this late stage.
The Hill of Doom – the
really long, very steep path through the woods – was difficult as it always is, but
I made it in the gasping, red-
But the gravel wasn’t the only cause for concern
underfoot. Once I’d started looking for them there were lots of things on my run
that could have sent me head over heels (or something similar). Cherries, plums and
windfall apples litter the path on some sections that I run on. These are usually
avoidable by carefully running into the road and around them, but some sections of
my route run through woods. The muddy trails are one thing, but another cause of
slippage on the tracks between the trees took me completely by surprise. I was running
in the early morning after overnight rain, and the path was surprisingly and almost
completely covered with slugs. Now I dislike slugs as much as the next man, but I
wouldn’t deliberately step on them. Sometimes however there are so many of them that
the inevitable happens. You know that horrible slime that they leave behind? They
must be full of it because they are more slippery underfoot than a sack of eels in
a tub of Vaseline, as I’ve sadly found out to my regret (and the slug’s too, I would
wager). Heaven knows what would have happened if I’d actually trod on some of the
rabbits that I’ve startled with my exercises.
And sadly it’s not just the wild creatures
themselves that cause slippery conditions either. You might like to re-
Every runner has to contend with their share of dog poo. If you jog on pavements,
footpaths or parkland, you’re going to have to avoid something unpleasant that some
little doggy has been glad to get rid of. Personally I’ve never done a Christopher
Dean impression through one of these little gifts, but by the extended footprints
that I see on my runs, plenty of others have done. And I live in the country, so
as well as the usual dog and cat mess, I have to sometimes sidestep some more exotic
waste produce. Horse droppings, cow manure, fox and badger scat; I’ve had to dance
a nifty fandango around them all. With the noises I’ve heard coming out of the deep
dark woods sometimes, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a pack of wolves in there,
happily preparing a biological skid pan for me to produce a You Tube-
“Now do I have everything? Watch… water
bottle…tub of salt (in case of slugs)… roll of Andrex…”
© Shaun Finnie 2009