Random reminder

Press, 29 April 1981, Page 29

Random reminder

! Nemesis

Oscar Wilde it was who said that necessity makes strange bedfellows: and sport as much as-any other personal weakness plays its part in bringing Contrasting types into contact, often with a thud. In the age of Adidas, when I'linning shorts and singlets are the Weight of fashion and it would be logical to expect to see runners grimacing their way round Hagley Park in pinstriped suits, marathon running has expanded tremendously and drawn into its ranks enthusiasts of a shape and personality it Jyould once have been impossible to ifnagine getting ■caught up in athletics. Marathon fields, which once consisted exclusively of men who looked about to die of an emaciating illness of long Standing are now dotted with men and women who look as if they eat every now and again and even with a few who look as if they eat again and again, i’. One of the latter types, who eats again dnd again and has been known to have a Small beer occasionally (on a hot day, say, or a cold one, or when the weather looks changeable) somehow became involved in a running friendship with a funner who has been around for quite Some time and who is regarded, and regards himself, as something of a guru. The Wise One instructed the novice on eWhich shoes to wear, the correct angle of the athletic support, which is the best ■rhythm to wobble along in, all the crucial aspects of running. As they ran, twice a day sometimes, they gave great ■pleasure to the citizens of Christchurch, the one looking like a cross between David Lange and Linda Lovelace, the

other like a Chelsea pensioner recently robbed of his uniform. ft They went to the West Coast together, one side of the car's suspension well down, the other well up. They set off with the first bunch in the Westland Marathon, chatting gaily and wincing along the brink of the world's most spectacular joint simultaneous heart attack as the later starters - - the entire field - - gradually wound its way past them. They were used to that: like boycar spotters who can pick out a make of car from a mere glimpse in fog at 300 yards, they had long become accustomed to being able, to recognise the receding back view of every regular runner in Christchurch. But they still had some shreds of selfrespect. They knew they were miles behind the rest of the field; they knew they both looked about to pass over into that place where pain and sorrow have no meaning: but they nevertheless became gradually irritated with the official ambulance crawling five yards behind them mile after slow mile. Eventually, the guru tired of its presence. He stopped — a miniscule adjustment — and suggested that the driver might like to drive on and see "how the rest of the runners were going. "There's no need to hang around here like a vulture,'’ he said. "Were going to get there." The ambulanceman was not con--1 vinced. “I'll stay with you for a while, I think,” he said.'“l know a pair of likely clients when I see them."