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Tardius, Inferior, Debilior
Jul. 26th, 2012 01:33 pmI was running through Battersea Park the other day...
Well, when I say 'running', what I mean is "Waddling slowly and painfully whilst sweating like a pig and making a noise like Chewbacca being tortured in The Empire Strikes Back", but "Running" makes it sound better.
So, I was running through Battersea Park the other day, when I saw, jogging in the other direction, the actor who plays Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones. He was looking fit and healthy and muscular and wealthy and famous and so trailing behind him, like the tail of a comet, there were a number of lady runners who weren't following him, no siree, they just happened to be running in the same direction as him and slightly slower and if their eyes happened across him well, that's just one of those things, right? Totally innocent.
It's one of the nicer things about living where I do; Battersea Park is one of the bigger London parks but doesn't seem to get as jammed as place like Hyde Park do in nice weather. Perhaps for this reason you get a certain number of celebs about the place - a friend of mine trying out her new rollerblades once collided with a man who on closer inspection turned out to be Pearce Brosnan, who in return regarded her with the irritated contempt of a man who gets girls accidentally colliding with him all the time.
The other draw of Battersea Park is that the gym has a proper athletics track and so you get serious - and sometimes famous - sportsfolk exercising vigorously. I can speak with the voice of experience that finding you're on the rowing machine next to Daley Thompson is a is a great way of making yourself feel staggeringly unfit and like you ought to be working harder, and I remember watching, one cold winter evening as I sat gasping and steaming by the track, a girl running the 200m like a gazelle again and again and again. I hadn't a clue who she was until I saw her taking gold in Peking a few months later and learned her name was Christine Ohurougu.
With the Olympics coming up the track is filled with distressingly fit people, some of whom I'm pretty certain must be professional athletes in training - there's one blonde girl who runs like something out of a nature documentary who I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see on a podium in a week or two.
Anyway, back in 2009 when the recession was on* I had to stop paying myself for a few months and so spent a lot of time in the gym as it was a cheap way of getting out of the house. One day as I trotted down to the track I noticed a girl getting a lot of attention and realised that it was Kelly Holmes, most famous for winning lots of bling at the Athens Olympics. She was just running round the track in an "I'm keeping fit" sort of way, and the other users were watching her. Anyway, I set about lolloping around the track in my charmingly wobbly way and shortly afterwards she went gliding past me like an antelope overhauling a warthog.
At that moment, it was like a switch went on in my brain. I'm not having that, I thought to myself. You think them two Olympic golds mean you can just overtake me without a by-your-leave?. I sped up. My legs went into a blur, and I overtook her. It was a great feeling for as long as it lasted, which was about eight seconds, all told. There was a whirring noise - like the Starship Enterprise when it's getting the warp engines up to speed - from behind me and a blurred figure, shifted slightly into the red end of the spectrum, whizzed past me.
On her next lap, as I slumped panting against the steeplechase jump, she gave me a huge and encouraging grin before vanishing over the horizon.
You know, I'm rather looking forward to the Olympics.
*I'm glad Gordon Brown solved it. It might have turned nasty otherwise
Well, when I say 'running', what I mean is "Waddling slowly and painfully whilst sweating like a pig and making a noise like Chewbacca being tortured in The Empire Strikes Back", but "Running" makes it sound better.
So, I was running through Battersea Park the other day, when I saw, jogging in the other direction, the actor who plays Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones. He was looking fit and healthy and muscular and wealthy and famous and so trailing behind him, like the tail of a comet, there were a number of lady runners who weren't following him, no siree, they just happened to be running in the same direction as him and slightly slower and if their eyes happened across him well, that's just one of those things, right? Totally innocent.
It's one of the nicer things about living where I do; Battersea Park is one of the bigger London parks but doesn't seem to get as jammed as place like Hyde Park do in nice weather. Perhaps for this reason you get a certain number of celebs about the place - a friend of mine trying out her new rollerblades once collided with a man who on closer inspection turned out to be Pearce Brosnan, who in return regarded her with the irritated contempt of a man who gets girls accidentally colliding with him all the time.
The other draw of Battersea Park is that the gym has a proper athletics track and so you get serious - and sometimes famous - sportsfolk exercising vigorously. I can speak with the voice of experience that finding you're on the rowing machine next to Daley Thompson is a is a great way of making yourself feel staggeringly unfit and like you ought to be working harder, and I remember watching, one cold winter evening as I sat gasping and steaming by the track, a girl running the 200m like a gazelle again and again and again. I hadn't a clue who she was until I saw her taking gold in Peking a few months later and learned her name was Christine Ohurougu.
With the Olympics coming up the track is filled with distressingly fit people, some of whom I'm pretty certain must be professional athletes in training - there's one blonde girl who runs like something out of a nature documentary who I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see on a podium in a week or two.
Anyway, back in 2009 when the recession was on* I had to stop paying myself for a few months and so spent a lot of time in the gym as it was a cheap way of getting out of the house. One day as I trotted down to the track I noticed a girl getting a lot of attention and realised that it was Kelly Holmes, most famous for winning lots of bling at the Athens Olympics. She was just running round the track in an "I'm keeping fit" sort of way, and the other users were watching her. Anyway, I set about lolloping around the track in my charmingly wobbly way and shortly afterwards she went gliding past me like an antelope overhauling a warthog.
At that moment, it was like a switch went on in my brain. I'm not having that, I thought to myself. You think them two Olympic golds mean you can just overtake me without a by-your-leave?. I sped up. My legs went into a blur, and I overtook her. It was a great feeling for as long as it lasted, which was about eight seconds, all told. There was a whirring noise - like the Starship Enterprise when it's getting the warp engines up to speed - from behind me and a blurred figure, shifted slightly into the red end of the spectrum, whizzed past me.
On her next lap, as I slumped panting against the steeplechase jump, she gave me a huge and encouraging grin before vanishing over the horizon.
You know, I'm rather looking forward to the Olympics.
*I'm glad Gordon Brown solved it. It might have turned nasty otherwise
