On yer bike
By my late teens, I had discovered a love of running, and I had discovered that I could be pretty good at it, too. What made me keen and good was the fact that I was running because I wanted to run. This would have come as a surprise to my wan, slightly asthmatic 13-year-old self.

My 13-year-old self was not a runner. My 13-year-old self was not much of anything when it came to sport, and I saw PE lessons as largely unwelcome intrusions into my life; they were there to cement the self-regard of the sporty - but I was neither sporty nor self-regarding. The weekly swimming session was tolerable; the weekly PE lesson in the sports hall - usually basketball - was also tolerable. But on top of this came Double Games. That meant, at least during the autumn and spring terms, either an hour of rugby, or an hour of cross-country. I hated both.

The games teachers saw fit to send us on a run. The naturally sporty and sub-literate hared off into the sunny distance in their expensive shoes; I settled into my slightly undignified plod somewhere near the back of the group. I was trying, though: by half way around the course, I could barely see and my lungs were bursting.

I fell to the pavement, a gasping, wheezing, spluttering pile of weakling. In the back of my throat was the taste of slow suffocation.

And along the road came the head of Sport, Tosh; he was patrolling the route on his bike to make sure that noone took any shortcuts. Tosh was not, I don't think, a sadist or deliberately unsympathetic. It was just that he loved sport, and was utterly baffled by anyone who did not. He looked at me, doubled up on the ground, as he rode past. He chose to express his concern for my welfare in the only way he knew.

"GET UP AND RUN, YOU LAZY BASTARD!"
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 23 Nov 2009, 9:59, Reply)