The Flamingo Diaries Lisa says ‘Cheers’ – to everyone!
Apocalypse Now with pompoms’ is how Rolling Stone magazine described Cheer, a series I recently watched on Netflix. The story of a group of Texan college cheerleaders preparing to compete in the National Cheerleading Championship, Cheer opened my eyes to a world of human pyramids and gravity-defying gymnastics. These cheerleaders gave superb support to their teams, but what was most touching was the way they supported each other. Battling injuries and fears that their teammates might not catch them as they plummeted from dizzying heights, they urged each other on with an almost constant barrage of encouragement known as ‘mat talk’.
Runners need this too. I remember an online debate in the 100 Marathon Club, of which I’m a proud member, as to whether aspiring members should be awarded a medal when they reached 50 marathons. One person pointed out that marathon runners don’t get medals at 13.1 miles. I thought they should get one, reasoning that runners relish the cheers not just at halfway, but all the way round the course. Anything that gives a boost gets a thumbs-up from me.
In the 2012 London Olympics, the main stadium was designed to maximise crowd support. ‘The athletes are so focused, it’s very easy for them not to hear the crowd,’ said the stadium’s architect, Rod Sheard. ‘We’ve got to make it really loud for them to get any benefit from it.’ And so Sheard ensured the 80,000 people in the stadium were packed like sardines and that the roof was shaped to echo their cries down onto the track. And Team GB won 65 medals.
What’s wonderful about being a runner, however, is that, as I saw in Cheer, we don’t need to wait for spectators to cheer us on; we can do it for each other.
During the 2014 London Marathon, I spotted a burly runner sitting near Big Ben, his head bowed in defeat. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘I can’t go on,’ he replied, his face pale with exhaustion.
‘You have less than a mile to go
– it would be crazy to give up now,’ I exhorted him. ‘Come with me. I promise I’ll get you to the finish.’
Reluctantly, he dragged himself up and took his first steps. What followed was a mile of low-volume cheerleading: ‘Looking good, well done, keep going, nearly there,’ I panted beside him as we trudged down Birdcage Walk.
Before we knew it, we were on the home straight, The Mall, which is coloured red with a synthetic iron oxide pigment to make it resemble a giant red carpet, and I began digging around in my bumbag.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Adam. ‘I’m getting out my lipstick so I’ll look good in my finisher photos.’
‘Can I have some, too?’
‘Of course,’ I said, handing it over while wondering what his girlfriend was going to think when they were reunited. We bagged our medals but I also got something I treasure even more: a photo of Adam, rugby-honed muscles bulging out of his race vest, proudly sporting a red-lipstick smile.
And so, as we once again put our quads, glutes and hamstrings to work at parkrun or in chasing PBs, let’s not forget the two small muscles that can make all the difference, to us and those around us: our vocal cords.