Lockdown Diaries: Please let me pound the streets again

My way of getting exercise has – since my early 20s – been getting out on to the road and running.

I’ve done a bit of cycling and swimming and was, in my youth, quite the triathlete.

I am not a gym bunny either. I am by nature not terribly sociable when I exercise and I have developed a simple rule for exercising: never go where the women have bigger biceps than me. That excludes Virgin Active, etc…

At home, I have a stationary exercise machine, which I bought some years ago to train while I recovered from a running injury.

It’s a useful piece of equipment because it gives you much more of a body work-out than running will because it simulates the motions of cross-country skiing which, I read somewhere, consumes the highest number of kilojoules of energy of any sporting activity.

But it is boring.

Even with headphones on and music playing, I look at the same scene out of the window or, if I am feeling adventurous, the pictures on the wall.

Some years ago, we had a TV in the room, but there is a printer now where it used to sit.

So, since the start of lockdown I have been trying to run – around my garden – to keep fit.

I normally start by walking a circuit – first clockwise and then anti-clockwise – for 10 minutes, which is about equivalent to one kilometre.

Then I run the same route for the same time. And, depending on how strong (or enthusiastic) I feel, will repeat alternating walking and running.

On Sunday I managed 40 minutes of running and one hour of walking, which is about what I would normally do.

The problem is – pay attention, ministers – that the longest straight I can run is exactly 24 metres. About one quarter of a 100m sprint.

The rest of the time, I can run five paces at the most before I have to jink and turn sharply, round a corner, up the patio steps, or through the carport poles.

And that has been playing havoc with my knees.

Despite the fact I have probably covered more than 60,000km on my feet in my running life, none of it has been done jinking this way or that, like Makazola Mapimpi.

So, Cyril, either let me out to run on the roads or I will bill you for new knees.

Brendan Seery.

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