Me running my first marathon in September 2018
This post is prompted by The Guardian article yesterday on this topic.
My running career started late.
At school I hated cross-country and would always join the smokers and skivers as soon as I was out not within eyeshot of the teachers. The trick was to run the last two or three minutes gasping as if you had exerted yourself for the complete course.
This implanted the firm belief that running was a form of torture rather than a means of pleasure, an opinion I maintained until well into adulthood.
What changed was that on reaching my mid-40s I realised that the consequence of zero exercise and a pasta-pizza-red wine diet would result in my entering the third age in the shape of a barrel.
I think you can get away with minimal exercise until you hit 40 and then the onset of middle age spread can take hold if you don’t do battle with it.
The original incentive to get of my ass and move was to lose weight. The other reason was that I realised that I got morose and bear-like if I sat around all day.
I now jog now on average two or three times a week. The most I run is for an hour on a path by the river, otherwise 20 minutes in the park is enough to set me up for the day.
Even with this fairly leisurely programme, I feel 100% better even though my weight has stabilised rather than dropping dramatically. My argument is that the fat has been replaced by muscle!
