Keep it in the family for a true running experience
For what is, essentially, a selfish sport, there are moments in running that connection with others is the most powerful thing about it. All the more so when those others are your family.
It’s true that running relies on your own mind and body – putting your own feet in front of one other, convincing yourself that this is a sensible, good thing to be doing.
But sweating it out alongside a loved one elevates the sense that running is more than just about exercise.
Of course, not everyone can or wants to run. So there are plenty of people who don’t get to feel that joy of running with the ones they love.
My wife, for instance, can’t stand running. In fact, she reckons she’s allergic to it. So there’s no chance in hell I’ll get to run a step with her (though we do enjoy walks together, even though, normally, I can’t stand walking – I mean, why would you ruin a good run by walking the whole way? Yep, I’m an impatient exerciser.)
But I am lucky that my first running memories are of going around the block with my dad, tying up our shoes on the steps, before heading off for a slowpaced plod.
When we got home sometimes we’d hose down our legs – he’d heard from someone that it was a good idea to plunge your legs in a cold pool straight after a run. We didn’t have a pool, so a hose it was.
The ritual of it all, the shared experience of effort and expending energy embedded in me a love of running.
And I’m really lucky, too, that my older boy, my step-son Marc, started running in his 20s. He’d never really run as a kid. But maybe something about watching me head out the door, or off for crazy missions, rubbed off. Or maybe he just came to it himself.
One of my favourite runs of all time was a couple of years ago when he asked me to pace him in a half marathon.
We ran stride by stride, up and down the hills, as I pushed him along in some sections, pulled him back in others, guiding him to his goal time.
I didn’t even mind when the little bugger sprinted away from me in the last couple of hundred metres – the exuberance of youth, huh.
We’re talking about running a marathon together one day.
This week on the Dirt Church
Radio trail running podcast, cohost Matt Rayment and I spoke to one of the leading lights in the sport, Australian Lucy Bartholomew.
And a lot of what she talked about was her relationship with her first running partner, her dad, Ashley.
The way she puts it, he was a marathon runner who, as he got older and slower, turned to ultramarathons, so she started to tag along with him for long runs in the bush.
Eventually, even though she was only a 15-year-old at school, she wanted to run an ultramarathon herself and her dad agreed. So she signed up for a 100km race on the condition of the race organisers that she ran alongside him.
‘‘I ran and talked and chatted with my dad and got to 100k and thought, ‘I want to do that again’,’’ says Lucy.
‘‘It wasn’t about running 100ks, it was just about spending time with my dad.’’
She was hooked. But soon she was leaving her dad in her dust.
Now 22, she ‘‘puts him to the sword’’, as she says. Last weekend, they both competed in the Great Ocean Walk 100km race along the Victoria coastline. She won in just over 11 hours. Her dad took just over 16 hours.
The next day, they both cheered on the sideline as Lucy’s brother set a personal best in the Melbourne Marathon.
That’s a family with quite some running genes.
These days, Lucy foots it with the best in the world, standing on the podium in world-class races. In June, she came third at one of the most famous 100 mile races in the world, the Western States Endurance Run in California. And alongside was her chief supporter, her dad.
Eugene Bingham and Matt Rayment hosts trail running podcast Dirt Church Radio. Learn more at dirtchurchradio. com or get in touch via email dirtchurchradio@gmail.com.
I didn’t even mind when the little bugger sprinted away from me in the last couple of hundred metres – the exuberance of youth, huh.