Abrupt end to a good run

As life-changing news conveyed by a medical specialist in a consulting room goes, this was pretty small change … but it was earth-shattering for me. Grim-faced, the surgeon showed me the X-rays. I had no idea what I was looking at.

“These”, he said, “are not knees for running on…” And just like that, he slammed the door on four decades of my life.

Nobody (except me) cares that those knees have carried me well over 60,000 running kilometres, that they helped me through many marathons (four of them in under three hours, and all in under four hours); four-and-half Comrades Marathons (the fifth and last was cut short at 63km in by a vicious bout of flu); to three successive years as the top triathlete in Namibia; and to a 10km road race time of 37 minutes… I have run and had conversations with Bruce Fordyce, Tim Noakes, and the first black man to win Comrades, Sam Tshabalala.

The latter was also one of my most memorable interviews, conducted “on the hoof” as Sam did a slow, early week, loosener training run (I struggled to keep up at the end, in awe of the fact the Comrades king had come back from an horrific taxi crash after which experts said he would be lucky to walk, never mind run, again).

Running has brought me moments of exhilarating hubris. As when I started the run leg of the gruelling Namib Triathlon, in Swakopmund Namibia and my mate and sponsor Gabor, cheered me on despite believing that, 15 minutes and six places behind the leader, I was done for.

“Gabor!” I shouted, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings!” One hour and 26 minutes later, having passed everybody and the race leader (who, despite being a provincial triathlete in South Africa, was almost on his knees and throwing up 2km from the finish) in the half-marathon run, I looked for Gabor and shouted: “Gabor! Can you hear that? It’s the fat lady! And she’s singing!”

It has been women runners who have humbled me with their discipline and determination and ability to survive pain levels much higher than I could bear – as the two women who past me as if I was standing still in the Two Oceans Marathon … gossiping.

I’ve run on a dirt track alongside the Thamalakane River in Maun, Botswana, surprising locals who told us afterwards that lions were not unheard of in the area. Then there was the Dunes Marathon in Walvis Bay in Namibia, where one has to climb on hands and knees up one of the highest sand dunes in the world … to find a sign at the top saying “Keep off the grass”.

I’ve run the streets of Paris, London, New York, Dresden, Havana and Rio De Janeiro, and been swept up in a fog of dope smoke in Venice Beach in Los Angeles. I’ve had a midnight jog across the ice in the Antarctic, an hour before sunset.

The decay of my knees (arthritis has taken hold and there is already bone-on-bone contact in some places) means a future of other, lower impact exercise. None of that, I know will replace the beautiful solitude – the loneliness of the long-distance runner – of running; nor the adrenalin or endorphin highs I have become addicted to.

I will have to deal with my own troubles and demons in another way now, unable to exorcise them on the road. When I started, there was a saying about running: It’s like banging your head against a wall; it’s lovely when you stop. No, it isn’t.

Brendan Seery

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.