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It was Me1’s turn to do the Park Run this morning and conditions seemed good. It wasn’t too hot, I’d eaten a huge amount of carbs last night and I was feeling pretty psyched up. It might be the first sub 25 minute 5k in human history.
I was wearing my short-style swimming trunks again and had considered not bothering with underwear, but luckily I decided it would be worth having an extra layer of protection. When you’re running long distances like this there is a 50/50 chance of soiling yourself (and also there’s a 50/50 chance of just soiling yourself anyway when you’re as old as me) so best to be able to double bag it and deposit it when no one is looking. The inner mesh of a swimming trunk can only provide the lightest of protection in such circumstances
Even though my tummy was a bit swelled by pizza and ice cream the shorts still felt a little loose, so I undid and tightened the cord before the run began, but as Me 1 started on his journey to potential legend status he realised that the shorts were actually looser than before and felt like they might fall, so he undid the slightly tangled knot and tried to tie the shorts tighter on the move.
But then disaster, somehow one end of the swimming trunk cord disappeared back into the inner lining. Should Me1 lose valuable seconds or minutes stopping to try and sort this out? Should he accept that he now had very lose shorts that would definitely fall down if not held up? Should he thank God that I hadn’t gone commando this morning?
I almost immediately decided that I should just forfeit this run to spare me the embarrassment of pant revelation, but then I thought of all that I had eaten last night and the bad news that my scales had given me this morning and thought that I must push on. And Me1, though not as filled with hatred for his rival as Me2 is for him, wanted to wipe the smug smile off of his doppleganger’s face and decided to run on whilst holding on to his swimming trunks.
This time there were no spectators who noticed and cheered me on (though one of the race officials did ask me at the end if I’d had a wardrobe malfunction so my predicament had been spotted), but Me1 was driven on by his lust for glory and somehow in spite of all this I got to the 1km mark in under 5 minutes. Me1 was on course for a world record.
Yet surely, suddenly running as a one-armed man must have made things trickier and given him less thrust or more wind resistance or something and the pace dropped. At 4 km Me1 was at over 20 minutes, so it would take a big effort to break the barrier that some scientists believe is beyond human capabilities. But Me2’s personal best of 25 minutes and 18 seconds was still in sight.
But in the end the sad figure of a man, running in the wrong type of trousers that he’d managed to break came home in a Me1 PB of 25 minutes 32 seconds. Me1 could not readily complain about the conditions of his run as he had been unforgiving of Me2’s brave, but slow run on the sands of Woolacombe. And with new running shorts on the way by post, Me2 now has a definite chance of extending his lead next week.
