Chainsaws in the mist
Dec. 16th, 2008 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavySince I started this running malarkey, it's baffled me how people who do it manage to get faster; I certainly don't seem to be improving noticably. Instead I clump along, wheezing away to myself, as others breeze past me with no evident effort whatsoever. Perhaps I'm not cut out for this sort of exercise, I think to myself. Perhaps the she-David has filled the soles of my shoes with lead as a witty jape. Whatever the reason, I do wonder what it is that might encourage me to run faster.
Well, last night I found something that works pretty well: Pure, unreasoning terror.
Whilst normally I use the running track at the gym in Battersea Park, when out in the country it's more enjoyable to take to country lanes and yesterday evening I found myself running along a riverbank as the sun set and a mist started to rise. It was extremely pretty in a late Victorian horror story sort of way and as the mist got thicker I distinctly heard a footstep behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. Nothing there.
The mist grew thicker yet, and, yes, distinctly. A footstep.
I looked over my shoulder. There, in the mist, a faint dark form as if of someone chasing me.
I speeded up.
Under normal circumstances I would have been quite pleased that I'd done so, but this wasn't normal circumstances. The footsteps, clearly audible now, grew closer and louder. I ran faster yet. I glanced over my shoulder again. The dark shape behind me was still indistinct, but there...was that the glimmer of dying sun off a hockey mask? The deep blue of overalls? Was that a machete he was holding? His footsteps got faster. It seemed that as I speeded up, so did he. There was no doubt in my mind. He was definitely chasing me.
To be perfectly honest, I was surprised at the turn of speed I'm capable of when presented with the right incentive. With the drumming of pursuing feet behind me I made it to the road bridge with streetlamps at the end of the riverbank in record time, which was where my adrenaline-fuelled feat of stamina came to a juddering stop. I clutched the streetlamp and gasped for air and as I did so the figure running after me bounded out of the mist and past. Just another runner out of an evening jog; significantly fitter than me, obviously, with the sort of physique that suggested his normal exercise was sprinting up mountains with a couple of anvils under each arm and an evening lope along the riverbank didn't even count as exercise for him.
I think I may have started to cry at that point.
Well, last night I found something that works pretty well: Pure, unreasoning terror.
Whilst normally I use the running track at the gym in Battersea Park, when out in the country it's more enjoyable to take to country lanes and yesterday evening I found myself running along a riverbank as the sun set and a mist started to rise. It was extremely pretty in a late Victorian horror story sort of way and as the mist got thicker I distinctly heard a footstep behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. Nothing there.
The mist grew thicker yet, and, yes, distinctly. A footstep.
I looked over my shoulder. There, in the mist, a faint dark form as if of someone chasing me.
I speeded up.
Under normal circumstances I would have been quite pleased that I'd done so, but this wasn't normal circumstances. The footsteps, clearly audible now, grew closer and louder. I ran faster yet. I glanced over my shoulder again. The dark shape behind me was still indistinct, but there...was that the glimmer of dying sun off a hockey mask? The deep blue of overalls? Was that a machete he was holding? His footsteps got faster. It seemed that as I speeded up, so did he. There was no doubt in my mind. He was definitely chasing me.
To be perfectly honest, I was surprised at the turn of speed I'm capable of when presented with the right incentive. With the drumming of pursuing feet behind me I made it to the road bridge with streetlamps at the end of the riverbank in record time, which was where my adrenaline-fuelled feat of stamina came to a juddering stop. I clutched the streetlamp and gasped for air and as I did so the figure running after me bounded out of the mist and past. Just another runner out of an evening jog; significantly fitter than me, obviously, with the sort of physique that suggested his normal exercise was sprinting up mountains with a couple of anvils under each arm and an evening lope along the riverbank didn't even count as exercise for him.
I think I may have started to cry at that point.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 03:21 pm (UTC)Have there been more than the usual number of random killings on the banks of the Dearne recently?
D
no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 03:24 pm (UTC)