Chainsaws in the mist

[davywavy]

Since 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.

Comments

[rssefuirosu.livejournal.com]

Ah dear, bad luck sir.

I've found that gradually increasing my speed over the course of a run has been a good way of turning up the speed malarky. I haven't noticed a large improvement when out running, sure, but I *have* noticed that when I've needed to sprint, there's been a lot more there.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

I can spur myself for brief moments to go much faster than I normally can, usually by screaming and waving my arms (physical or airsoft) as I charge, but I pay for it later!

Perhaps the next stage of your training is to attach fresh steaks to your legs and run past a dogs home...

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fear/adrenaline can give you a serious boost. I still don't know how I managed to go that fast when I ran from my would-be muggers in Manchester (after Jilly's back to the Cam National hotel) but after I'd calmed down in the lobby, I hurt like hell...

[lexx-uk.livejournal.com]

But it could have been the Phantom power jogger of some random river bank :D

[(Anonymous)]

He will have dumped the mask and machete in the undergrowth when he realised he wasn't going to catch you. He will retrieve them next time you are out.

Have there been more than the usual number of random killings on the banks of the Dearne recently?

D

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to say; even a 5% statistical anomaly would be in three figures.

[ddraiggwyrdd.livejournal.com]

You forgot to mention that he was over 70 and using a zimmer frame.

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

Next step in the fitness programme: jogging into skinhead bars and loudly exclaiming that Hitler was a poof.

thanks

[diamondkelt.livejournal.com]

That's probably the good laugh I needed for the day.

Fear motivates all.

[(Anonymous)]

It's Davy "Rex" Kramer - Dangerseeker!!(for those who've seen the Kentucky Fried Movie....)

Personally, I'd rather be chased by the girls from Monty Python's Meaning of Life...