Run! Sweat! & Cheers!

How parkruns conquered my fear of keep fit

- Ian Kirke

I loathe running. At secondary school, the cross country run was a fucker and I usually brought up the rear crossing the line well after the athletic kids were showered and probably on their way home. In the early 1970s designer gear comprised of plimsolls and a standard white top and blue shorts. Think of the film Chariots of Fire to picture the type of attire then picture Dopey, the dwarf from Snow White, to frame in your mind how I looked on those particular days that were either blistering hot or conducted in monsoon conditions. With school cross-country, there was never an in-between. I wasn’t overweight in those days, quite the contrary being like a stick of celery, but for some physical or perhaps more likely a psychological reason, me and running were not good partners. Once I left school, I thought that those days were firmly behind me until I joined the police and during the initial training at Ashford, Kent the asshole Physical Training Instructors (PTI) had us carrying fucking logs on our shoulders as we ran through the muck around the Police College. Even though I had completed some pre-training by running several times a week from my parents’ house in Bagshot, Surrey to Sunningdale and back without stopping (a more than credible 7.5 miles) my hang-up with running persisted.