Pre-Scriptum: This post, which was a long time in the writing, was
finalised at around 30,000ft over the Atlantic as I made my way towards
Atlanta, GA for a week’s worth of meetings and discussions around Service
Lifecycle Management. I then checked it one last time in my hotel room a few
days later. If you can’t run at ten miles, you might as well write about it.
Oh, and a lot of the work was done while listening to Little Richard’s
“Very Best Of”. I was scrolling through for the Manic Street Preachers but
stopped one early. After all, the guy changed the course of popular music and
popular music, made white folk dance like no whitey ever had previously. Worth
a listen at any altitude. And gotta love the attitude.
Right, let’s do this!
I have long intended to write a piece on the relationships
I have developed with fellow runners through Social Media. People whom I’ve
never met, with one solitary exception. People
with whom, nevertheless, when it comes to running I empathise and sympathise,
in a reciprocal and reciprocated way, far more than with many people whom I’ve
known for decades.
So – who are these people? Are they friends? Are
they followers? Are they connections? Are they mere IDs, names? And, most
importantly, are they nutters? Let’s find out!
Firstly, I want to underline some of running’s
characteristics. I wish to do this from the perspective of someone who’s tried
his hand and feet at many sports. Forget long jumping, shot putting and all
that ‘official’ decathlon stuff: if decathlon consisted of football, tennis,
golf, swimming, cycling, running, cricket, volleyball, basketball and
table-tennis, I wouldn’t do too badly. I wouldn’t do great at any of them, but
on a good day I’d get by in most! As a result of which, and because I’m an
overthinker, I have an appreciation of what is required to succeed in many
sports, of the differences between the minds of sportspeople who do well and
badly in any of those.
SIMPLICITY
SIMPLICITY
Let’s look at football (the one you play with your
feet) and tennis, the two sports that account for the majority of the time I’ve
spent on pitches, courses, courts and pools around the world. They are very
different, not least in their essential characteristic of team and individual
sport respectively. Yet they share some defining characteristics, too. Try to
describe a football match or a tennis match and you will find yourself picking
out acts of brilliance or disappointment that marked them, from a blinding save
to a cute lob. You will probably highlights swings in who held the upper-hand,
smart tactical thinking, gamesmanship, debatable decisions… just listing such
headers brings back to mind penalty saves, lobs, volleys, comebacks and that
daylight robbery by Pete Lench and Richard Clarke in the Portishead Men’s
Doubles 2006 Semifinal, to name but a few. They are hardcoded into my visual
and emotional memories. Now, when it comes to running…
…sure, I remember occasional sections of races, not
least because I’ve only run three to date. I remember the final 200m of the
Sheffield TenTenTen, the gruelling final mile of the Bristol Half Marathon before
I finally saw the finishing line and the Wyvern Christmas Cracker from 2012, no
problem. But they don’t stir the same levels of emotion as other snippets of
other sports. They are all part of a bigger picture, of an overall race. And,
during those races, my goal wasn’t to shine with moments of individual
brilliance as with previous sports. I was aiming for boredom, for monotony: for
the ability to run 13mi at a steady, constant pace, with no major accelerations
or decelerations. I might have been aiming for a time or for a distance, but
time and my own limitations would have been my sole adversaries: even when
surrounded by thousands of others, those races are purely against myself, and
my time is unlikely to be defined by any single step or stretch. It all comes
together when you cross the finishing line, or indeed when you walk back
through the door from a training run. Until then, there is little room for
short-lived brilliance. Which is not to say there is little room for error:
there is plenty of that in pacing yourself. It’s just… well, easier to explain.
Beyond self-analysis, what does this mean when it
comes to sharing experiences? It’s simple: it makes it easier. This is no
football game where you have to try and convey subtle tactical changes, the
impact of a missed penalty, the bad timing of a substitution… it is no tennis
encounter affected by a bad line call in the second game of the third set… if
after a run you text, tweet or indeed just say “Ten miles, 1h33’55””, as I
might have done a few mornings back, you are already providing a fairly good
indication of your performance and the opportunity to comment upon it with it.
Of course there is scope to enhance it further: 217m of elevation made it hard
going in some places, there wasn’t much wind about but the end of the Esplanade
is always a killer, and the final stretch up Nore Road is just what you need at
that stage… not! Those are details, embellishments to a picture that is
otherwise factual, accurate, unblemished by officials or competitors.
EMPATHY
I feel better placed to appreciate what fellow
runners are experiencing than I felt in other sports. Again, it’s because it’s
easier to compare scenarios. So you understand what it means to go out in the
pouring rain at 6:40am, to be a mile from home and need the toilet (sorry but
it’s true!), so get to a mile from the finishing line and suddenly feel
drained… And, because you understand, you can empathise.
Sure, I fully understand what it’s like to lose a
key tennis match in a 3rd set tie-break having won the first set and
I fully understand what it’s like to lose a football match on penalties. But
there are always more variables surrounding those scenarios, not least the
opposition (did you lose it or were you beaten?) and your team-mates (was it
really their fault?). Running is simpler: it’s just you and what’s under your
feet. There’s a simplicity, an integrity that I really appreciate – and that is
reflected in the type of people you meet through it. (The integrity that is, I’m not making any intellectual comments here!)
SUPPORT
I played at Portishead Lawn Tennis Club for
around a decade. During that time I probably played around 50 league fixtures: four
players per club, four doubles’ matches. It’s as close to a team format as
tennis gets.
During those matches I’d support my partner, we’d
share advice and we’d gee each other up. This would work better with some
partners than others. It would all be fairly basic stuff: mid-match is not a
time to be getting into the finer technical points of any sport. That’s what
club sessions are for…
…only you wouldn’t see much of it then, either. There
are multiple reasons for this. There isn’t the time in between games; you don’t
hang around much afterwards; any such discussion has to be practical, words
alone are pointless; and most of us don’t want to come across as patronising
know-it-alls when, ultimately, we’re all just amateurs engaging in a few hours’
escapism. As for those who don’t mind coming across thus, they are often
ignored anyway…
Last but not least, the guy who’s your partner on a
Sunday afternoon is your opponent on a Tuesday night, he could be drawn against
you in the Club Championships in the Spring… you raise your guard again. Less
so with beginners: if they’re no threat you do your utmost to help them, trying
to ensure you’re not overloading them or expecting too much of them. But those
whom I saw as threats got little off me and I got little off them. I wouldn’t
have expected it to be any other way.
I have not found any of this with my social media
running buddies. Maybe it’s because we don’t really see each other or maybe
it’s because, even if we were to run the same races, we’d have different goals:
it wouldn’t be a matter of beating each other but of achieving our goals,
hitting a PB, etc.. And sure, it’s also because any running advice is easier to
word, to encapsulate in a 140-character tweet than any advice about a forehand
grip. I’m sure there’s an edge between runners of similar levels but,
otherwise, if you’re smart enough to recognise that your pal’s better than you,
you know you’ve got nothing to gain by trying to keep up with him/her. Go for
broke in a tennis match and you may still lose but you may win more games or
sets than you were hoping for. But go for broke to beat a mate in a race and…
you won’t reach the finishing line.
I genuinely enjoy seeing my online running buddies
do well. Thanks to the online running/cycling tool/community Strava, I can see
exactly what, when, where and how they’ve run – providing, that is, they used a
GPS device (watch or smartphone) and posted its data. This engenders the online
equivalent of back-slapping and cheering, in the shape of Strava’s ‘kudos’
(Zuckerberg would call it ‘Like’) and accompanying comments, creating a
virtuous circle of inspiration drawn and provided. Seeing that Nic’s run a 10-miler, for
example, doesn’t make me feel bad because I only ran 7.77: I recognise and
acknowledge his achievement and draw inspiration for the next time I go out
there, if not to run longer then maybe to run faster. And hopefully it’s a
two-way thing – I’m fairly sure it is. I cannot think of any other sport in
which someone else’s achievements are as motivating, whereas I can think of
plenty where they may be discouraging or even, whisper quietly, engender
jealousy…
If you don’t run, or indeed don’t do sport in
general, the above paragraphs will sound like vacuous rubbish. If you’ve been
out there running on your own, say at 5:30 on a cold December morning (but even
on a warm and breezy June evening), then you will appreciate that any form of
acknowledgement of your effort (and sometimes that’s just the getting out of
bed part!) is welcome. Moreover, the simplicity of running comes to the fore
again. You don’t need to analyse video footage of a badly-timed offside trap or
a wild backhand down the line: glancing at distance, time and maybe altitude
gain/loss (all factual and untainted by subjectivity) and you have an instant
understanding of the run completed. Delve into splits and gradients and you
have more valuable data at your disposal than most tennis pundits could dream
of. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that, what with Cousin Joe working for Hawkeye
right now..?!
Right, back to the fundamental question: Are these
friendships?
Of course, that in itself raises the question of
“What is friendship?” Do I have 378 friends, as my Facebook profile suggests?
Do I hell. I probably have thirty – and half of those aren’t even on Facebook
(yes, such people exist, apparently). I’m not going to define ‘friendship’
here, as no doubt it means different things to all of us and none of us enjoy a
monopoly on the right definition: but I would expect that, however we define
it, we end up with a similar number. If it’s fundamentally different, you are
either amazing or deluded.
(OK, here’s where I jump off the fence… sort of!)
I certainly think online exchanges can provide the
foundation for friendships. I think some of the relationships they enable are
more supportive and constructive than some I enjoy with people one would
traditionally class as ‘friends’, certainly in the specific domain of running. But,
in order to be fully classed as friendships, is face-to-face interaction
required?
I’ve pondered this at length. At one point I was
leaning towards stating that you do have to meet in the flesh the person behind
the avatar for reality to rubber-stamp or throw out your online experiences.
But here’s the thing: the amount of benefit I’ve had from my relationships with
them, in terms of advice and inspiration, is truly phenomenal. They influence
my purchasing decisions more than multi-million advertising campaigns, they
help me find extra strength when out on the road more than any “Runner’s World”
article… my relationship with them might be virtual but their impact on what I
do and how I do it is absolutely tangible.
So, having weighed all the evidence and overthunk
the matter extensively, I’m going to say that yes, I do consider as friends
some of the #nutters I’ve met on Twitter and whose runs I now follow on Strava.
That notwithstanding, I am quick to add that I would also dearly love to meet
them in the flesh to cement those relationships. Which ties up with what
I wrote about my friendship with Jon, which was strengthened significantly
by our shared experiences along the roads of Pill and subsequently Bristol.
Male friendships require that DYRW
(“Do You Remember When”) moment: “Do you remember that tweet” doesn’t quite cut
it. Now, if I were to run a race with some of my Twitter buddies… well that
would be one heck of a DYRW, eh?
Who knows, maybe that will be the Sheffield Half Marathon on May 12.
I’m running it and so are some of them. We’ve loosely discussed running
together but, and rightly so, not had any firm talks as that bonding feeling of
sharing an experience should not compromise the pursuit of individual goals,
whatever they may be, or the race will deliver the opposite result.
So, if you’re one of the #nutters reading this, I
hope the conclusion I reached does not offend you. Thanks again for all the
advice, inspiration and perspiration. See you out there on the wires soon… and,
hopefully, one day on some sodden field or sun-kissed asphalt.
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