Running Like a Girl (5 page)

Just as I was desperate to find gear that would make my training easier, I also wanted to look good without—crucially—looking like I was trying too hard. There was that goofy schoolgirl inside me, whispering, “Don't try too hard. If you dress like a dork, no one will expect anything of you. Just stick to black.”

At least for now there was one thing I didn't need to address: running shoes. Or so I thought.

Apart from the ceaseless quest for the perfect outfit, things were looking good. My confidence was on the up. I could run for over an hour without praying for death, and I had learned some survival basics. I was not going to dehydrate like a novice raver halfway around Regent's Park. I was not going to let the money in my pocket fly off across the river. I was not going to get lost between the Heath and my house. As Christmas approached, I dared to let myself believe that I might—
might
—be able to see this plan through.

Until I did my first ten-mile run. I had been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading it. While I was excited about conquering double digits, there seemed innumerable reasons to pull up the duvet and stay home. It was already well into the festive party season, and I was feeling a little delicate. I was halfway through a crime novel I was spellbound by. I had fresh coffee in, and someone had recently given me a box of peppermint creams that I hadn't finished. However, the ten-mile milestone was ludicrously enormous and had to be passed.

The statistics rattled around in my head, becoming more mind-boggling with every spin. I was about to run ten miles for the first time in my life. Ten! And after only a few months of training. I absolutely knew that if I didn't get it done this weekend, it wouldn't happen until after Christmas, and that by then it would be almost impossible.

All it says in my running diary about this run is: “Very cold. Very windy. Very horrible.” It was the sort of Sunday that was made for lying in bed with someone you really, really fancy, feeding each other high-carbohydrate foods and talking about novels that, for that day, you truly believe are meant for you and you alone. Instead, I was wearing a selection of ugly, garish clothes, including my old tatty sneakers and a pair of fleece gloves I'd borrowed from my sister.

It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done.

I set off down Maida Vale with the list of relevant street names scribbled on the back of my hand. My skin chafed with cold every time I peeled back the glove to check that I was going the right way. I crossed the canal, headed through Kensington, and turned in to Hyde Park. It was bleak, gray, almost deserted. A few old men were resentfully walking the small dogs of wives who had remained indoors. A lonely-looking father pushed a sleeping baby round and round the pond as I ran in the opposite direction. Another runner, a young guy, flashed past me and vanished into the distance down a path near the bandstand.

My ears were raw with cold. I took the glove off one hand and tried to fit my fist in my mouth to warm it up. I wiped my bare palm across my upper lip and realized that my sweat had frozen into little salt crystals across my face. I was miserable. I headed out of the park by Queensway, and the road started to incline slightly. Every time my foot hit the pavement, it hurt
more and more. It felt as if the pads of my feet were entirely flat, leaving me running on near bone. I began to wince with almost every stride. My toes were the only part of my body that felt hot; now they were almost radiating. I'd never experienced this level of pain, apart from slamming my thumb in the car door as a wriggling child. The practicalities of my efforts no longer stacked up. If I felt so much pain in ten miles, what would twenty-six feel like? I was barely running, just trudging along, muttering “Keep going keep going keep going” to myself, as condensation poured from my mouth.

I was two and a half miles from home—nearly there. Six months before, I couldn't run two and a half miles. Being nearly there was an enormous feat in itself. This thought alone propelled me onward, despite my throbbing feet.

Eventually, tearfully, I made it home. My hand, clawlike with cold, took over a minute to unlock the front door. I made myself a bowl of pasta, had a long bath, finished my book, and only then looked at my feet. They seemed normal, if a little rosy. Two of my toes were very tender, like a bruised steak. It wasn't until I swung my feet out of bed the next morning that I spotted two of my toenails were dark blue.

My toes looked as if they had been hit with a hammer, cartoon-style. They had not been hit by a hammer; they had simply been for a long run. I had not run on any different or unusual road surfaces. In fact, I had made an effort to avoid running on the cement, which I'd heard was bad news. Over the following days and weeks, I watched with fascination as fresh new nails grew on two of my toes: Each one began beneath the existing nail, from just a couple of millimeters to a full-sized toenail, slowly pushing off the dead nail. It was mesmerizing. After a couple of days I felt no pain at all, merely intrigue. Would the old nail fall
off before the new nail was fully grown? Would I have twelve toenails now? Would the new nail grow back in time to paint my nails for spring? These questions consumed me. Until it was happening to my own feet, I had always assumed that the dreaded process of losing a toenail from running would involve the nail coming clean off one day, in a spurt of blood and gore. But no, nothing ever hurt as much as the day of the ten-mile run. I continued through the party season, giving my open-toed shoes a wide berth. A few months later, my new toenails were good to go.

A brief scan of the Internet suggested that I needed some fresh shoes after all. I discovered what had really happened: I had given myself two blood blisters from running in shoes too small. When you run for longer than about twenty minutes, your feet start to swell up, just like they do after a night of fearless dancing in heels you swore fitted brilliantly when you bought them. If you're adding that pressure to the constant slap of foot on unforgiving concrete for a couple of hours, you do in fact replicate the same injury as slamming your thumb in the car door. The thud of toes pressing between trainer toecap and road had been a mighty slam for me on that ten-mile run. It was time to face the music.

Dashing out to buy the right pair of running shoes seemed about as possible as popping down to Denmark Street to buy myself the right Fender Stratocaster. I was clueless. All I knew was “Not too much pink and not too many reflecty bits, like a cheerleader in the eighties, please.” Though vanity and my quest for respect stopped me from wanting shoes that looked “fashion,” I had no idea whether I could pull off anything more professional-looking. But I knew where to go. To the experts! So, enthusiastic little ponytail swishing in the rain, I headed to the London Marathon store in London's Covent Garden.

On the fascia outside the store is a large digital clock that counts down the days, hours, and minutes to the next London Marathon. I had worked in Covent Garden for years and given the clock an occasional glance at most. I used to laugh on occasion at the earnest expressions of the men within (for they were always men) as I swerved past on the way to a post-work cocktail. Now I needed that store. I needed it urgently.

It seemed best to push aside my quibbles about the store looking very much like one in which a woman had never set foot, and I told myself now that I was a runner, I would be accepted by the staff as one of them. I expected a warm welcome, a kindly listening ear for my queries, perhaps to be addressed in the manner of a colleague or, at the very least, a like-minded spirit.

As I tripped down the street, my nerve started to fade. The numbers flickered above the doorway, counting down. The numbers of days until the marathon seemed very few indeed. Anxieties I thought I'd left behind crept back in. By the time I crossed the store's threshold, my jaunty gait was all but gone. The glass doors clanged shut behind me, and two men looked up and stared as if I were the newest cowboy in a particularly choosy saloon. These weren't the kindhearted fellow runners I had been hoping to encounter.

I nodded to them with strained casualness. “Hi,” I mumbled. I edged over to the clothing, circling my target gently. I picked up a couple of tops, ran their curious slithery fabric between my fingers, replaced them on the rack. I held a pair of running bottoms up to my waist, then hurriedly hung them back up. They would no more fit me than an elephant. The younger of the two men approached me. He was wearing serious sportswear and a cap. His tracksuit looked as if it had seen a track rather than just
a sofa and some pizza boxes. His gait was confident; he knew his stuff. And he seemed to know I didn't.

“Can I help you?” he asked, as if unconvinced that he could.

“Yes, actually, I am looking for a pair of running shoes.” A dramatic pause. I stared him in the eye. “Because I am running the London Marathon.”

I awaited the gasps of admiration. Or at least a grunt of camaraderie. Nothing. Not even a shrug. It dawned on me that he probably dealt with chumps like me every day.

“If you're going to buy running shoes, you'll need to be measured, and we only do that by appointment, and we don't have an appointment for a few weeks.”

“It's okay, I know what size I am.”

“It really doesn't work like that.” He had not maintained eye contact. I was starting to sweat; I felt a telltale line start to appear down the back of my T-shirt. I pulled at it frantically.

“How
does
it work? I know my shoe size, and I need some shoes.” This young chap wasn't going to get the better of me. I had money to spend, and I was determined to spend it.

“Well, you'll need to run on our @£$@£ machine, and then we'll need to look at your gait and analyze the data, and then @!$£^, and in case of pronation pfftng.”

Meaningless words were flapping around me. I had no idea what he was saying. Stress was buzzing in my ears like a wasp in a jam jar. “I'm sorry, could you explain that again?”

He repeated himself. He did not explain. Ennui dripped from his every word. He gestured to a scanlike running machine in the corner of the store. This wasn't going to be like when I was taken to the shoe store as a child to get the new school year's T-bar shoes. My T-shirt was now sticking to my rib cage, front and back.

“Well,” I said with a heavy intake of breath as I tried to summon my very best Holly Golightly face, “thank you for your time.”

“You need to make an appointment.”

I had no intention of making an appointment here; I was scared witless, intimidated by his talk of footfall and pronation and exhausted by trying to maintain the pretense that I belonged here.

“Yes, thank you, I will call in once I have spoken to my assistant.” I have never had an assistant. I just wanted to go home and put on my slippers. This shop needed to not have me in it anymore. But I stayed for a further two minutes, occasionally lifting and examining a pair of display shoes. I tilted my head in a manner that I assumed indicated great pensiveness, as if I knew what I wanted yet had decided not to get it today. That was very much the impression I told myself I was giving.

Perhaps it wasn't as long as two minutes, but the burning shame rendered my cheeks a deep shade of crimson, and I left the store sweating and confused. Why had I felt so humiliated? How had one sneering shop assistant managed to make me feel like such an imbecile for wanting something perfectly commonplace and fundamentally sensible?

Over time, my wretchedness turned to rage. How dare they patronize me? They were there to sell me a product. They had the knowledge that I clearly needed to access; why were they obstructing my path? For weeks, months even, I went on thinking that buying running shoes was a rite of passage, an almost mystical experience, an earned privilege.

That is bullshit.

Politeness is politeness in whatever context it occurs, and it is an essential business practice. I can say with confidence that
the bloke in the store was either having a very bad day or was just a dick. There is no excuse for being rude to timorous first-time runners, for making them feel stupid for not knowing the correct terminology when they have approached you for help. It takes a lot of courage to go on those first few runs, and either scamming or demeaning them when they are vulnerable and in need of support is unforgivable.

But I'd been cowed for the moment, so I didn't buy any shoes and went bra shopping instead.