A Village Run
Its May bank holiday. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning. It’s raining torrentially.
Being England, the majority of the population are still in bed, hangover, watching TV or in church. They are certainly not standing in the centre of a park wearing shorts and a vest, stretching their calves against the side of a tree. No, there must be something very, very strange about these people.
However, as I look around at the competitors huddled together on what we assume to be the start line, one thing crosses my mind. These people are all so normal.
In proper, serious running races everyone is a familiar breed – lean, muscly individuals wearing club outfits, all looking very serious sand focused on what is ahead of them for the next 45 minutes. These are not normal people. These are elite athletes. There is something strange about them. But in the race today – the Randolph Featherwood memorial 10 mile – these athletes are conscious by their absence. It is a much more…human affair.
The field is comprised of the fat and the thin, the old and the young, the fit and the not-so-fit. There is a team from the local gym and a team from the local kebab house, there is a six year old kid running with his dog and an eighty year old man running with his stick. Most of them would rather in bed watching TV, or hungover, or even in church. None of us want to be out in the rain. None of us what to run 10 miles.
Today the man to bear is Vincent Fairbrass. He has won this race for the last five years and is string favourite again this time. No-one has ever come close, and I think even if I could beat him I wouldn’t want to. It just wouldn’t be the right thing to do. There are crowds of people chanting his name as the town crier walks over to announce the start of the race. Vincent doesn’t look particularly fit and I have never heard his name mentioned at any other race in the country, but at the village he is always there and always brilliant, and herein lies the difference between the village run and anything else.
None of these people, not even Vincent, are engaging in the same activity as we in the city and the suburbs do. They look different, they sound different, and they wear different expressions on their faces. As we prepare for the start I feel an absence of intensity or focus, there is no nervous shuffling of feet or readjusting of stopwatches and when the town crier says go we will go, simple as that. No-one is prepared and so no-one is stressed or tense, we are here to run, simple as that.
The race begins, immediately turns up a steep hill out of the village and then diverts into a muddy track through the woods. After a few minutes of impossible slog I stop my stopwatch in disgust and then notice that everyone else seems to be overtaking me. A man passes me whilst adjusting the wedding dress he wears over his spikes, a teenager breezes ahead whilst dancing to music on his headphones and an old man scuttles up whilst his dog chases enthusiastically behind No-one seems to care about the time or the gradient or the minutes per mile, but yet...yet they are all running very, very fast. I had thought that as the only seasoned city racer in the field, wearing my trail flats and Lycra top, I’d be streaming ahead at the front, but the complete opposite was happening. In their relative relaxed and individual ways, the indigenous athletes were overtaking over and over and I had no response.
For a while this made me very frustrated:
‘How can they be so quick?’
‘Look at their awful techniques!’
‘What a stupid course.’
‘I’ll bet they make it like this so outsiders can’t win.’
Which made me tense up even more, made the hills harder and made my pace even slower.
Then as we emerged from out of the trees, the contest became even more incredulous.
Ten of the runners who had overtaken me were stopped at a table on the side of the course, helping themselves to halfway pints of beer that were being served by the local brewery. Yes, beer – that cardinal sin of the super-healthy modern athlete – being downed by runners who so far had appeared to have considerably more stamina than me.
‘Here it is,’ I thought to myself. ‘Here’s my chance. There’s no way they’ll be able to stay ahead of me now.’
I sprinted passed a bemused bartender and up to second place, with the curly black if Vincent Fairbrass in my sights. There was 3 miles to go. Soon the city, the civilised world, the serious runner, would show this village idiot how to win.
The course headed back into the woods and the mud, and through gasping and gagging I somehow managed to stay on Vincent’s tail. Surely his energy couldn’t hold? Surely the beer was going to slow him down?
Then I became aware of a noise behind me, the sound of bounding, running feet juxtaposed with an incongruously jovial conversation. The voices were familiar – I had heard then only minutes earlier – and then seconds later the physical forms revisited my sense once again. A wedding dress, a large pair of headphones, a wrinkly neck and a chubby behind all bypass in a leisurely gallop as if I wasn’t there.
‘...and then she nudged me in the side,’ on was saying. ‘And told me I’d find my trousers in the marrow patch!’
‘Ha, ha!’
‘I guess there is plenty of room to spare down there.’
Then they were gone, leaving my flailing, helpless body behind.
On the hill back down to the finish the cheers below told me Vincent had already won and it was at this point that I finally accepted it. This race was different. The runners weren’t like those I encountered back home; the course was nothing like the city parks and streets I normally ran through; but most of all the running itself was different here.
Running is a challenge. It is a way to better yourself, to focus your mind, to escape from the pressures of the world, to attain oneness with yourself, to be healthy, fitter and to be a winner.
Not here it wasn’t. In the village running was only one thing. It was fun. There was no complications – goals, targets or times – it was just fun. The village race was fun - Vincent Fairbrass won and everyone else enjoyed themselves. That was it. That was all the race was and all running was for.
It was when I approached the finish line that this hit me. My shoulders relaxed, my arms lightened, my legs flew over the ground and I could feel my pace increase without me trying. It didn’t matter. I just needed to enjoy it. Running was good and running was fun. Running could make me smile.
I ran that last quicker than I have ever run a mile before, all because I wasn’t I trying. That’s the secret of the village run. Don t try and be something else, don’t keep striving to be better. Run because you enjoy it. It’s amazing how much better you will become.
Being England, the majority of the population are still in bed, hangover, watching TV or in church. They are certainly not standing in the centre of a park wearing shorts and a vest, stretching their calves against the side of a tree. No, there must be something very, very strange about these people.
However, as I look around at the competitors huddled together on what we assume to be the start line, one thing crosses my mind. These people are all so normal.
In proper, serious running races everyone is a familiar breed – lean, muscly individuals wearing club outfits, all looking very serious sand focused on what is ahead of them for the next 45 minutes. These are not normal people. These are elite athletes. There is something strange about them. But in the race today – the Randolph Featherwood memorial 10 mile – these athletes are conscious by their absence. It is a much more…human affair.
The field is comprised of the fat and the thin, the old and the young, the fit and the not-so-fit. There is a team from the local gym and a team from the local kebab house, there is a six year old kid running with his dog and an eighty year old man running with his stick. Most of them would rather in bed watching TV, or hungover, or even in church. None of us want to be out in the rain. None of us what to run 10 miles.
Today the man to bear is Vincent Fairbrass. He has won this race for the last five years and is string favourite again this time. No-one has ever come close, and I think even if I could beat him I wouldn’t want to. It just wouldn’t be the right thing to do. There are crowds of people chanting his name as the town crier walks over to announce the start of the race. Vincent doesn’t look particularly fit and I have never heard his name mentioned at any other race in the country, but at the village he is always there and always brilliant, and herein lies the difference between the village run and anything else.
None of these people, not even Vincent, are engaging in the same activity as we in the city and the suburbs do. They look different, they sound different, and they wear different expressions on their faces. As we prepare for the start I feel an absence of intensity or focus, there is no nervous shuffling of feet or readjusting of stopwatches and when the town crier says go we will go, simple as that. No-one is prepared and so no-one is stressed or tense, we are here to run, simple as that.
The race begins, immediately turns up a steep hill out of the village and then diverts into a muddy track through the woods. After a few minutes of impossible slog I stop my stopwatch in disgust and then notice that everyone else seems to be overtaking me. A man passes me whilst adjusting the wedding dress he wears over his spikes, a teenager breezes ahead whilst dancing to music on his headphones and an old man scuttles up whilst his dog chases enthusiastically behind No-one seems to care about the time or the gradient or the minutes per mile, but yet...yet they are all running very, very fast. I had thought that as the only seasoned city racer in the field, wearing my trail flats and Lycra top, I’d be streaming ahead at the front, but the complete opposite was happening. In their relative relaxed and individual ways, the indigenous athletes were overtaking over and over and I had no response.
For a while this made me very frustrated:
‘How can they be so quick?’
‘Look at their awful techniques!’
‘What a stupid course.’
‘I’ll bet they make it like this so outsiders can’t win.’
Which made me tense up even more, made the hills harder and made my pace even slower.
Then as we emerged from out of the trees, the contest became even more incredulous.
Ten of the runners who had overtaken me were stopped at a table on the side of the course, helping themselves to halfway pints of beer that were being served by the local brewery. Yes, beer – that cardinal sin of the super-healthy modern athlete – being downed by runners who so far had appeared to have considerably more stamina than me.
‘Here it is,’ I thought to myself. ‘Here’s my chance. There’s no way they’ll be able to stay ahead of me now.’
I sprinted passed a bemused bartender and up to second place, with the curly black if Vincent Fairbrass in my sights. There was 3 miles to go. Soon the city, the civilised world, the serious runner, would show this village idiot how to win.
The course headed back into the woods and the mud, and through gasping and gagging I somehow managed to stay on Vincent’s tail. Surely his energy couldn’t hold? Surely the beer was going to slow him down?
Then I became aware of a noise behind me, the sound of bounding, running feet juxtaposed with an incongruously jovial conversation. The voices were familiar – I had heard then only minutes earlier – and then seconds later the physical forms revisited my sense once again. A wedding dress, a large pair of headphones, a wrinkly neck and a chubby behind all bypass in a leisurely gallop as if I wasn’t there.
‘...and then she nudged me in the side,’ on was saying. ‘And told me I’d find my trousers in the marrow patch!’
‘Ha, ha!’
‘I guess there is plenty of room to spare down there.’
Then they were gone, leaving my flailing, helpless body behind.
On the hill back down to the finish the cheers below told me Vincent had already won and it was at this point that I finally accepted it. This race was different. The runners weren’t like those I encountered back home; the course was nothing like the city parks and streets I normally ran through; but most of all the running itself was different here.
Running is a challenge. It is a way to better yourself, to focus your mind, to escape from the pressures of the world, to attain oneness with yourself, to be healthy, fitter and to be a winner.
Not here it wasn’t. In the village running was only one thing. It was fun. There was no complications – goals, targets or times – it was just fun. The village race was fun - Vincent Fairbrass won and everyone else enjoyed themselves. That was it. That was all the race was and all running was for.
It was when I approached the finish line that this hit me. My shoulders relaxed, my arms lightened, my legs flew over the ground and I could feel my pace increase without me trying. It didn’t matter. I just needed to enjoy it. Running was good and running was fun. Running could make me smile.
I ran that last quicker than I have ever run a mile before, all because I wasn’t I trying. That’s the secret of the village run. Don t try and be something else, don’t keep striving to be better. Run because you enjoy it. It’s amazing how much better you will become.
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