Running Like a Girl (7 page)

How complicated can socks get? I went for a few runs in the rain in regular socks and found out firsthand. These raw weekend runs taught me just how much a sock can chafe once it has been drenched; they persuaded me to invest in some double-lined sports socks. Effectively two socks attached to each other in some sort of never-ending megasock, they remove the friction from your feet, ensuring that any necessary rubbing goes on between the two layers of fabric rather than fabric against skin. A revelation! And don't get me started on compression socks, something I thought was a fad until I ran a marathon and discovered the sweet, sweet relief that they bring. They feel like leg hugs, comforting and warming in equal measure, as if you have your feet up even when you don't. I have been known to wear them to shows.

Once socks had given me the confidence to swagger around a sports shop asking for what I needed, I was free to experiment with buying all sorts of other products. The more I shopped, the more comfortable I became around the weird and wonderful world of sportswear design while testing the boundaries of what worked for me. I was intrigued by how I might juggle everything I needed for the longer runs. For months I diligently left the house with a sixteen-ounce bottle of water only to return home under an hour later with it unopened. You don't always need it. Unless it's a very hot day, you will be fine for about an hour as long as you've had a good couple of glasses before you leave the house.

For those longer runs, there is a variety of options, from the ergonomically pleasing sixteen-ounce bottles with a hand-shaped grip, to the high-tech backpack-style devices that carry a couple of quarts, feeding a straw into your mouth when you need it. A good friend told me years later that when she undertook her longer runs, she left small water bottles at the foot of trees she would pass, drinking them as she went. For me, the simplest solution was to warn my friends that I'd be stopping at their homes for water along my runs. Otherwise, I'd pop into cafés where the staff knew my face.

In those early days when I obsessed over the disasters that could befall me on anything longer than a 5K run (being hit by a car, passing out from exhaustion, becoming delirious with dehydration, crapping myself in the gutter, et cetera), I continued to leave the house with keys, cash for a cab, iPod, and water. I'd get home with a sodden fiver and the imprint of my front-door key on my palm where it had been pressed up against the water bottle. These days I take keys and iPhone in my hand, having lost patience with those armband holders long ago. They always seemed to slip down to my wrist within three miles.

I'm glad I made those early forays into the world of running gear, though I've changed my mind about a lot of it since. One thing I have remained steadfast on is never wearing shorts to run. I'm not sure I will ever be able to face my raw thighs looming toward me every time I take a step. They are chunky at the best of times, and when I've been running for longer than about ten minutes, they tend to turn a color that even a diplomat would have to describe as corned beef. Add to that the uncomfortable sensation that “loose” legs make as they hit the ground, and it's all too much jiggling for me. I stick to caprilength leggings for most of the year and have a couple of pairs
of long running tights for winter to prevent red raw ankles. I have a pair of heavenly thermal-lined running tights for winter, much to the disapproval of my brother, who is insane enough to run in shorts all year round.

The only problem to be solved once committed to running in leggings is that of underwear. Big, sporty, cesarean-height, a thong like a cheese wire—the list of available options is almost infinite. I tried large sporty-branded types first, but I was left dispirited by the enormous dent that the seam—even from seamless ones—left beneath my running tights. The thong lasted no longer than two runs: It is impossible to get farther than three miles looking and feeling as uncomfortable as only having a piece of brightly colored cotton wedged between your butt cheeks while you run up a hill can make you. The solution I found is simple but effective: I no longer wear panties for running. It's just another unnecessary layer beneath a far superior layer of wicking fabric.

I finally worked out what wicking fabric is. Rather than being what my mother describes as “that disgusting slithery stuff,” it is in fact a highly technical fabric that moves moisture away from the body and toward the upper surface so as to dry quickly.

When I first envisioned myself running, I saw myself as Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling in the opening scenes of
The Silence of the Lambs
. So strong, so focused, so proud. She is utterly confident, completely single-minded about her training run across a terrifying assault course. At one point she runs past a tree with the sign HURT AGONY PAIN LOVE IT stapled to it. She doesn't care what she looks like; she has shit to do, and she is going to get it done. And yet . . . she is wearing a phenomenally impractical outfit. She is in a heavy cotton sweatshirt and
tracksuit bottoms and is drenched in sweat. The top is sticking to both her chest and back and looks painfully heavy. She is summoned by a colleague and heads inside past a roomful of people dressed in khaki, faffing around with guns, and then gets into an elevator. All in the heavy, damp cotton. That wet fabric must have gotten incredibly cold the minute she stopped running, and it bothers me whenever I think of the poor woman in that meeting. For years the scene was my running inspiration, yet now I am unable to watch the first hour of the film without worrying about whether Clarice is shivering from the horrors of Hannibal Lecter or because she caught a dreadful chill.

Mercifully, fabrics these days have eradicated such issues. While modern running tops might seem oddly slithery to the touch, they feel like an entirely different prospect once they're clinging to your chest, protecting you from sweat. Same goes for light-reflective patches on sleeves, necklines, and along the edges of calves and thighs. They are not there, as I initially suspected, as ridiculous splashes of flashing bravado but to potentially save your life on a dark winter's evening.

In the early days, my instinct was to buy and wear clothes as baggy as possible in an attempt to conceal my amateur blubber. I quickly realized how futile that is. Running clothes are not tight because retailers want you to be exposed. They are just easier to run in, and you're less likely to get your headphone cables tangled in loose fabric. And, well, smaller clothes are less fabric to carry around with you or have rubbing against your shoulders, hips, or rib cage as you battle through the rain on a stormy day. I am in no way suggesting than an early-Britney crop top is ideal for every runner, but we don't need to skulk around in a T-shirt that our husband or brother would no longer deign to sleep in.

When I first started shopping for running gear, I would frequently stand in a changing room, heart racing and hair damp with sweat, muttering darkly about why all these clothes were “clearly designed for skinny women who are already fit.” I would wail about it incessantly to anyone who would listen, but the fact is indisputable: There is something out there for everyone. I have hunted for skorts with friends who have recently had babies, discovered tiny zips and pockets that are designed to be the same size as a subway card or a spare tampon.

No one designed running clothes to make you feel bad. Why should we look like crap because we're trying hard? I don't believe we should. Increasingly, sports brands are realizing that for as long as exercise is presented to us as a vile must-do to be robotically fitted in between earning a living and maintaining relationships, we're going to resist it. Next time you waver at the threshold of a sports shop, don't think of it as buying clothes to exercise in; approach it as getting some gear to make your body as happy and joyful as possible. It doesn't matter if nothing matches or it gets ripped or splattered in mud—just enjoy wearing it, and let your body have some fun. You should not have to choose between being a runner and being yourself.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

—William Shakespeare

S
everal months after I started running, I realized it was time to start listening to my dad.

I have always loved and respected my father, though he's not one of life's big chatters. Apart from family and his military career, I knew little about what made him tick. Far from a cold man, he is simply very self-contained—and used to a home filled with a wife and two daughters who could marathon at chatting itself, leaving him and his son for dust.

My mother is effortlessly glamorous, as well as somewhat exotic. Raised in the West Indies, she came to London as a teenager and became a dancer. She is rarely not wearing lipstick. She is the kind of woman who painted her nails a fresh specific color before each of our births. And she made staying slim seem effortless. I never saw her sweat. In hindsight, I can see she was on the move from the moment I was awake until long after I fell
asleep in a constant flurry of child care and housework. On an emotional level, she can be a bit “turned up to 11.”

In adolescence, my body changed, and I became curvy, like my mom. I relished it. She was the epitome of grown-up elegance, and I would stare up from my seat on the carpet behind her, mesmerized by her putting on makeup. Or I would perch on the edge of the bed, enthralled, as I watched her choosing clothes before going out. I aped these little rituals when I grew older, painstakingly applying the cheapest and most basic moisturizer that she finally relented to buy me. I would swoosh the unnecessary cold cream over my face, sweeping it across the area where I hoped my cheekbones would grow, desperately hoping that this would launch me into full adulthood.

Meanwhile, my father seemed to become more distant, or at least different. When I was a child, he had been everything I could ask for in a father. He was endless fun in the garden, constantly inventing games, never tiring of lifting and throwing us from bike to swing and back as we shrieked and gallivanted. He always had time, and he always had energy. Once I had outgrown prancing around, what we had in common decreased at speed. I wanted to chat about lacy bras and makeup, not tanks and foreign policy. As I discovered boys and developed a taste for their associated dramas, it didn't seem terribly cool that my dad was a polite, charming, and kind man.

As I headed into my twenties, our relationship seemed fixed. I loved my father, but I didn't really know how to communicate with him. I accepted this status as permanent and gave it little further thought. Until I bought a copy of
Runner's World
.

As part of my exploration into the world of running, I had timorously bought my first copy of the magazine at a busy train station. I instantly set about reading it from cover to cover. A
couple of mornings later, I swung my legs out of bed, pushed myself up in a fog of sleepy limbs, and skidded a foot across the room on the magazine's glossy cover. I looked behind me at the creased pages and headed to the kitchen. As I closed my eyes, waiting groggily for the kettle to boil, I saw a clear image of the permanent heap of running magazines that my father kept on the floor at his bedside. I remembered trying not to skid on them as I clambered up into my parents' bed on Sunday mornings. I remembered one time slipping on them and sending a cup of coffee flying across the carpet. I remembered my mother trying to tidy them up, time and time again. “Why must they be here in the bedroom?” “They are so ugly!”
“
I keep skidding on them!
”

I smiled slowly to myself. I felt a tiny morsel of what it was like to be my father.

A few weeks later, I tried to leave my flat, only to trip over a heap of running shoes by the front door, drying on a sheet of newspaper after a particularly rainy run. An image of my mother doing the same thing at home flashed across my mind. Suddenly I could remember every crease of those mid-eighties New Balance shoes. They were the sort of running shoes that forty-something men who have nonspecific jobs in digital content agencies now wear to the office. Back then, however, they were my father's most prized possession.

Not long after that, I discovered the joy of a long, silent bath after another of my longer-than-I'd-ever-run training sessions. As I closed my eyes and rested my head on the back of the tub, I recalled my sister and me hopping outside of the family bathroom, rattling the locked door handle, desperate for our father to come out and play in the garden. Our mother ushered us downstairs with a stern “You know how tired he is after a marathon.”
He ran marathons and then came home to a family of three loud and rambunctious children? Of course he did, I realized. He did it several times.

My childhood was reedited. My father was in shorts for breakfast most mornings not because he dressed like us but because he had just returned from a run. We played the best games in our garden because our dad was the fittest, the strongest. The downstairs bathroom was not only where our mum kept a spare bottle of perfume but also where his increasing collection of marathon medals hung.

The next time I called home, I stopped him when he did his usual “I'll get your mother for you.” I said, “Hang on, I want to ask you something. How many marathons did you do in the end?”
It must have been five or six all in all,
I thought.

“Nineteen,” came the reply.

“Nineteen?!”

“Yes.”

“I don't remember you doing half of them.”

“Well, I did nineteen official ones, but sometimes I used to do runs that long as well.”

“Oh my God. How, HOW?”

Soon we were having one of the longest chats we'd had in months, possibly years. All at once we had a way of communicating, and over the weeks that followed, it became a secret language. He would call me with news of compression socks he had discovered, or supplements, or training tips. We would chat about how my latest runs were going, and I would ask him for advice and motivation. He would cut things out of the paper and send them to me, or save books he had found for the next time I visited home. It didn't matter that sometimes I had no real news about my fitness; it became something we
always chatted about anyway, our common ground. It was now “our thing.”