Respect

I got my hot sweaty run all right; and a whole lot more...


As I was on my way out, Matthew asked if he could come too. He loves running around the block with me, and hence impossible to refuse some good father son time. Five hundred meters later, Matthew made his sprint to the finish.

And then I was off.

It was incredibly hot and the South Easter was gale force. With my arms pumping, heart pounding, and legs burning with effort, I charged at a snail’s pace into the teeth of the wind. The thought of a route that avoided it was enticing but the challenge of running headlong into a wall of fury sparked my imagination.

My legs seemed to have a life of their own, they just felt like running. I found myself loping up a particularly steep hill and then into the countryside. Surprisingly there was another runner up ahead. Catching him up, I discovered he was a big chap in his early sixties. We ran side by side for a couple of kilometres, sharing runner trivialities. The running seemed to be effortless yet my time had run out, and I turned for home.

The roaring of the wind in my ears was immediately replaced by music which had till then lost the battle to be heard. The wind pummelled me from behind, lengthening my stride, and the merciless sun solicited rivers of sweat from my tiring body.

The kilometres flew by and I was soon home. Fulfilled and fatigued!

It was only in the shower that the thought struck home. I had run a couple of kilometres with a sixty year old man, a man more than twenty years my senior, and he had effortlessly matched my pace into a gale force wind. He had talked of long runs into the mountains with glee and waxed lyrical about races longer than 160km.

Now that’s worthy of respect! And goes to show that age is never an excuse!