Oh, how many feet you meet

Press, 27 October 1976, Page 5

Oh, how many feet you meet

f By STAN DARLING c t Come over here, babe. Take off those hob-nailed J boots and walk all over me. ‘ Most of my running these | days is done on the stomach, I with the pitter-pat of big feet in the small of my back. A < nagging ache—one of Hagley ; ' Park’s more voracious wildjl creatures—has moved in I there and made itself quite at] 1 home. i Just one of the agonies ofp running for fun. Aches and! pains sometimes leap out of]l the tall grass, and latch on I for a ride. I The passenger on my lower ji back is a charming little guy.|] I like him a lot. He clutches i with great tenacity. So I found an out-of-work i lady lumberjack to walk on ■ me. Grandma’s old recipe for ; painkilling. All I’m getting 1 out of it so far is a flat shape ■ from being squashed into the ground by over-sized feet. Running for fun could be i the death of me yet. I’ve given up smoking, only to be pierced in the backside by the arrows of outrageous jogging. And all the while the real! runners—those office stalwarts who sometimes lope 501 miles a day, making their bodies resemble tangled yards

of taut twine—smirk over in the far corner. Up to their elbows in roll-your-owns, cigars and pipes, they watch me wincing in pain and chewing thoughtfully on a cigarette-substitute banana. That variety of runner I can do without. They have a wild spark in their eyes, a j bright gleam that makes Ithem resemble a pilgrim who |has just seen God —and discovered that He is a longdistance runner. They saunter about deep- ' breathing, as if blowing out The noxious poisons exhaled | by the rest of us. If you ask Ime, all their gyrating and (pulsating makes them look | decidedly unhealthy. I Their lives would be much more interesting if they would run with gay abandon and twist their feet in grasshidden holes more often, the way normal folk do. A few foolish injuries would do them a world of good. After all, didn’t Ernest Hemingway say W'e are always stronger in the broken places? In the desert heat a few (years ago, knee injuries were ’ all the rage. Chugging up the llong hills, the rest of the (body was too hot and loose 'to get hurt. But the old knees

would come unglued silently! and painlessly once in a while j if I over-reached. Then there would be a good ] month of stabbing pains whenever going downstairs or downhill. Nowadays, I get up from chairs in slow motion, waiting for the ache to get a solid grip in a way that makes my language quite colourful. My passenger gives me a bite now and again to let me know he’s still hanging on, still in charge. I’d like to coax him outside for a natter, then boot him from here to breakfast. But he’s having hone of it. With luck, I’ll be out on the riverbank again in a few days. I see myself floating like a wraith over the grass, in full stride. Too bad that’s not how others see me. “Call that a stride, son?” an old whitebaiter called out one morning. “More of a wobble, if you ask me.” The old poop. I’ll manage a wheezing sneer on his fishing technique the next time around. I’ll raise my knees in splendid symmetry. I’ll fly past like a wounded bird. Now if I can just get that lady to walk on my back one more time . . .