The Flamingo Diaries
Meet our new columnist, Lisa Jackson
My love affair with running was a late-in-life romance: I didn’t find love until I was in my 30s and, even then, it hasn’t always been easy. No, it’s been a tempestuous relationship littered with break-ups and make-ups, the odd fling, intense passion and ardent aversion. If you’re familiar with the slogan ‘I adore running – just not while I’m doing it’, you’ll get where I’m coming from. Running first set my heart aflutter in 1998. Back then, I was allergic to exercise and, having suffered hot-faced humiliation when I’d repeatedly come last on school sports days, the word ‘running’ was a synonym for ‘shame’. That changed when a colleague invited me to a Race for Life in Battersea Park, London. As a first date, it was awkward but it got my heart racing in more ways than one. I had to walk most of it, but that gave me more time to chat to people, appreciate the atmosphere and marvel at the fact that running didn’t have to be horrible. I realised it could be fun. I found running difficult – I still do – but my feelings deepened and in 10 months I morphed from a fitness-phobe into a fairy-wings-wearing, super-slow marathon runner, completing the London Marathon in a shade under seven hours.
This short summary of my running romance doesn’t tell the whole story, however, because along the way there have been innumerable ups and downs. Sure, I loved the way running gave me the chance to talk to strangers for hours without getting you’re-a-weirdo looks, but hated the fact that many a time I felt as if I was slogging through melted cheese. There were periods when I had a few brief flirtations with triathlon and long-distance walking, and others when I fell out of love altogether and didn’t run a step for weeks, or months, finding that, unlike most runners I know, I could live perfectly well without running. Except I couldn’t, and kept running back. In that way, our relationship resembled that between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: she couldn’t live with him, but couldn’t live without him either. There were also times when I renewed the vows I’d made to running, when it became the fulcrum around which my life revolved as I wholeheartedly committed myself to training for two 56-mile ultramarathons in South Africa and relentlessly pursued my goal of joining the 100 Marathon Club.
My relationship with running has never been plain sailing, but the one I have with Runner’s World is blissfully uncomplicated. In 1998, you couldn’t surf the net for training plans, and non-technical running books were thin on the ground, so when I stumbled across RW for the first time, it was love at first sight.
The Penguin Chronicles, written by John ‘The Penguin’ Bingham, a 40-something, overweight smoker who transformed his life through running, was my favourite column. I revelled in John’s ‘no need for speed’ philosophy and the way he celebrated tortoise-like runners like me who were at the back of the pack. Like mine, his story was an account of the triumph of tenacity over a lack of talent. I was sad when he retired in 2014 and, ever since, have felt there’s been a penguin-shaped hole in the magazine, one I’m now honoured to have been invited to fill.
These days I run all of my races in the (now rather faded) pink flamingo hat I donned for my first ultra, which is why I have named this column
The Flamingo Diaries. Following in The Penguin’s waddling footsteps, I hope to spread his message that running isn’t reserved for the fast and the fit. It’s also for the shufflers, the strugglers, the stragglers. In the coming months, as I share my ever-evolving relationship with running with you, I hope you’ll come round to my view that running isn’t about the time you do, but the time you have while doing it. Lisa is the author of two bestselling running books, Running Made Easy and Your Pace
or Mine? The audiobook version of the latter will be available from January 31.