Less Really Can Be More

MY FRIENDS KEEP TRYING TO CONVINCE ME THAT RUNNING LONG EQUALS RUNNING BETTER. I’M HERE TO DECLARE: “NOPE.”

- Sarahz Wexler

IN MY SHORT - LIVED HIGH school athletics career, my favourite days were Saturday morning competitions. Sure, the air in the sports centre smelled like stale adolescent BO, and I never once medalled. But I had a blast: my friends and I gorged ourselves on doughnuts and sour worms, shared gossip, decorated posters in glitter glue with each other’s names, and napped in our sleeping bags, not even waking at the frequent starting guns. And oh, right – sometimes I’d run! A quick 200- metre sprint later, I’d be back with my crew, legs wobbly and spent, and filled with a sense of accomplishment that entitled me to as many handfuls of sweets as I wanted (who cared that I’d probably burned only a few kilojoules in my race).

The thing I despised perhaps more than anything on earth, though, was the five days of training before each event, racking up kilometre after repetitive kilometre, when my event was a mere 26 seconds. Er, 29 seconds. Okay, 32 seconds. Running very short distances has always felt like pure joy to me, an explosion of power I get to unleash – like how my car-loving brother must feel when he guns the engine on his Mustang. Ask me to run more than 800m, though, and suddenly the same act is a slog, like pulling myself through mud.