The Treadmiller’s Tale – An Irishman’s Diary about middle-age running

Of late, I often find myself looking down on people who go to the gym. This is not a snobbish thing; it’s purely geographical. It just so happens that a gym – a 24-hour one – opened at the end of my road last year. And it’s in a basement, overlooked by ground-level windows. So I can hardly avoid gazing down on its occupants, in passing.

But if not snobbery, the angle does lend itself to sceptical observation.

Sometimes it’s like being a scientist studying the behaviour of laboratory animals. In which vein, I’ve developed a grim fascination with the hamsters – treadmill runners and nordic-walkers – in particular.

It’s partly that their machines are all lined up together on the far side, facing a wall.

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And it’s partly that the users tend to have earphones, isolating them from each other, or any kind of interaction. So when there are half a dozen in a row, pumping arms and legs, while not actually going anywhere, they can look a bit mad.

Mind you, on several nights a week, I pass them while out for a run myself. If they could see me, I’d probably look mad too.

I often feel it, when the wind is howling, my middle-aged knees are creaking, and my shorts are, like a third-party fire-and-theft insurance policy, not providing anything like the comprehensive coverage I need.

On such occasions, the indoor treadmill doesn’t seem a bad option. Unfortunately I have this old-fashioned need while running to get from point A to point B. So I continue to resist the temptations of the gym, in favour of Dublin’s three-dimensional streets and footpaths.

Actually, I do a gym class too, elsewhere. But that’s a small, group affair, with a supervisor and a name – “TRX” – that makes it sound dynamic and purposeful. I still don’t know what the letters stand for, although I’m fairly sure the “T” means “torture”. Certainly, the routine involves many of the things you’d expect in a medieval dungeon – straps, weights, etc.

Treadmill

There’s even a treadmill – a vicious, upward-curving thing that inflicts biblical-style punishment (slaughtering fatted calves, mainly) during the short periods you can endure it. But there’s a big social aspect to the class, and nobody wears earphones.

And although the pain is sometimes added to by the 1980s soundtrack – Duran Duran inevitably included – that our instructor Marc believes is a vital aid to fitness, I’m sure the hardship is worth a minute or two off my 10K times.

Alas, the career of Duran Duran coincided with my peak as an athlete, even if I didn’t appreciate it then. I could probably have continued to improve during the heyday of later bands – Oasis, for example – had I not been distracted then by other things, such as work, parenthood, life in general. By the time I got back to training, the ship of youth had sailed.

Former self

The great thing about running, however, is that you’re always competing with yourself. You can even compete with your former self, from any decade, provided that the former self weighed two or three stone more than you do.

Failing that, lifetime PBs (personal bests) are unlikely in your 40s or 50s.

When I got back to running a few years ago, I soon realised I couldn’t compete with my Duran Duran period, but that the Oasis era was a realistic target. So I now divide lifetime PBs into two categories – one for the 20th century (no longer attainable), the other for the 21st. That way, I can still beat records set by my younger self, if not in actual youth.

It remained possible until recently, and maybe still is.

But these days, I’m noticing that times I ran three or four years ago, believing them to be mere milestones en route to better things, are now hard to repeat, never mind better.

And I wonder if this is something I can still change – by training harder, say, or making lifestyle adjustments (giving up drink remains an option, albeit one I wouldn’t undertake lightly). Or could it be that I have reached that dreaded point where no amount of exercise and clean living can outrun inevitable decline?

That’s the other thought that haunts me when I look down on the treadmill people. Maybe, even while running outdoors, in three-dimensional space, freezing my butt off, I too am on a treadmill now. It’s a metaphysical treadmill, obviously.

But it means I have to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same place.