Things I Write About When I Write About Thinking About Running

OK, so the amount of mithering you'll find on this blog might make it seem as if that bloke from Sleaford Mods finished his A-levels, but really I'm not that fucking bad. I find it easier to be negative, that's all. I apologise to those bored enough to still be reading this.

Anyway, things are about to get a lot more interesting, but before I reason out exactly why that is, there's just enough time for A Minor Reminiscence:

Since time immemorial, I have hated running. A sliding scale, where x is speed and y is negative feeling, clearly exists in my brain - somewhat thus:

As a child, I was made to run, but I am uniformly bad at it. I was overtaken by my younger sister from the age of nine onwards. I have no pace, stamina or particular technique. Like Teddy Sheringham or a late-career Beckham, I prefer (or more accurately, hope) that my mind will be quick enough to put my slow-turning, non-accelerating body in the right places in life. So far, it has done just fine.

I'm sure we've all done cross-country runs in the past, right? Horrid, obviously, but a part of growing up, like acne or terrible haircuts, which simply must take place. I don't mind having had to do cross-country runs as a kid - I don't think they did me any good, but I don't mind them being there, smelling faintly of Deep Heat and BO, in the rusty locker in my head where I keep all those old secondary school memories.

During my mid- to late teens, I benefitted, as some young whippersnappers are wont to do, from having the apparent metabolic rate of an impala. I ate whatever I liked. I did no exercise, other than that demanded of me by polyester-rocking PE uberleiutenants or, for one diverting year, the bloke who ran the paper rounds down at the New Forest Post's fusty headquarters. Fred, his name was. Wonder what happened to him? Dead, probably, by now.

Anyway, I was an arrogant, bonk-eyed whippet of a thing, all piss and vinegar, and everything fitted and nothing hurt. Ever. 'Fuck you, exercise as a concept', I must have shouted as I sauntered through university, still whip-thin, powered by Lambert & Butler, Skol and burgers. 'Hahaha!', I will have bellowed to myself as other 'squares' started to go to gyms voluntarily, and in order to look and feel good, both internally and to others. Dickheads, obviously. Waste of time, all this. Just you wait and see.

The honeymoon from any kind of meaningful exercise lasted until I worked in videogames journalism. Already an underpaid, sexless, dietician's nightmare of a career, my colleagues and I added extraordinary levels of alcohol and nioctine intake to our already meagre diets. Seasons changed. Burgers were eaten. Beer was consumed. Hills were avoided. And slowly enough that you wouldn't really notice, in a manner later perfected by both global warming and the Republican Party, things started to change. My body, once a rusty trampoline of a thing, blithely repelling the four sausage sandwich breakfasts and twenty lattes I threw at it on a weekly basis, started to run out of bullets. Down in the engine room, Scotty had his oxygen mask on, and first-year ratings were being thrown off gantries to their undeserved deaths by exploding panels of lights and dials. The outer hull remained, to the untrained eye at least, unchanged, but within, trouble was afoot.

Slowly, I began to run to fat. I'm not fat, though. Just sort of 'unkempt', physically.

So I started running the other day. And I almost like it. It makes you feel physically in touch with the world, and tired. So damned tired. You sleep well, you feel present and capable and awake in a way that sitting at a desk for nigh-on two decades so far hasn't been able to replicate. Getting over what others think of the sight of you running is easier than I thought it would be, too - turns out, you just start fucking doing it and if you need to, see it as a fuck-you to everyone else who isn't looking after themselves. 'Haha', you shout silently to yourself, 'I have one over on you lot - I'm self-improving.' Or something.

Anyway, long story short, I did a 5k, with several walk phases, up several hills, in 32.33. Some people I know who are 10 years younger than me can't do that on the flat. Keep going, I say. I want a flat, treadmill 5k time around 24 minutes, and the one involving steep hills outside my house in under 30. Then I will be happy. I'm happy now, though, because I know if I just put my shoes on and go, I'll have gone, and will therefore get where I want to be. QED, innit.

Sorry in advance

I can't see people passing their driving tests and humblebragging about it on Facebook anymore. It's poisonous to me. I hate their success. Hate it. And by extension, I hate them. I hate them because they have categorically succeeded where I could not, and never will. Their lives are apparently limitless. Mine is restricted to a lovely house in the middle of fucking nowhere. I cannot escape. I cannot change. I cannot move. I cannot grow. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.

I am moving in two years' time to a place from which I can get about unaided. This is ridiculous. I feel disabled, and useless, and sub-them. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them.

My life has all the makings of a big heap of nothing. He is literally some sort of fucking rocket scientist. I am a writer who has written nothing. I have sat in the back-bedroom of my house and failed to complete a simple form, and then failed to do a basic job. No one has cared, or called, all day. Fuck this.

Of course I didn't do that great idea I had. Because I'm a cunt. A useless fucking cunt, sitting on his own, shouting silently inside his own head, unable to change a single fucking thing.

As you were.

I've just had a brilliant idea...

I would like to write more, but don't know what to write about.

My life, as it happens minute-to-minute, doesn't seem like the kind of thing that other people would like to read about. But then again - I live in Devon, I have a dog, I work in London, or wherever, and I travel a hell of a lot, pretty much at will.

I could stretch this and form some sort of creative pursuit/blog/vlog out of it, no?

I'll start a little blog and push 1,000 words a day through it for seven days to see if it has legs.

More on this soon (maybe).