The Great Oxymoronic Confluence is more likely to be next year than this year. Several things have caused the postponement _ a skiing holiday and some resulting upper-leg pain, a new job with a later finishing time, the change of date of the oxymoron itself, and more pertinently the regrettably conflicting desires of wanting to be an athlete in the morning and a consumer of fine wine, food and good company in the evening.
What was the name of the dumb philosopher could not understand the distinction between the mind and body? The Great Oxymoronic Confluence is almost inevitable, but not this year.
It will occur when I run the 10 kilometres of The Canberra Times Fun Run in the same number of minutes as my age in years _ 44 by Fun Run day. It is an elegant equation, and I’m sure there is a quick physiology PhD in it for someone.
Take young Arturo Barrios, for example. Young Artie broke the world record for the 10 K run in 1989. Did he reach the Great Oxymoronic Confluence? No way. He was 23 at the time and took 27.08 to run it. By now young Artie is 29, but I bet he’s added a couple of minutes to his time. Besides, for people like Artie the confluence is not oxymoronic; they really enjoy running.
(By now you will have reached into your dictionary to find that an oxymoron is something that is self-contradictory, and there are only a few finer examples than Fun Run _ military intelligence, Catholic education, Queanbeyan dictionary owners and, more poetically, the sounds of silence.)
Unlike Artie, Harold Marshall, of Farrer, reached the confluence long ago. In 1984, aged 65, he did the Fun Run in 50 minutes, 42 seconds and exactly the same time the following year. A decade later he was still well under. At 75 he ran last year’s run in 70 minutes and 54 seconds. Time was catching up on age though. I doubt whether he will be able to do the run in 80 minutes when he is 80. The tributaries and anabranches in the river of time will not permit it.
Harold was a bit of a runner at school, though, winning his school athletics cup in 1937. Whereas, I hid in a large tree (like St Zacchaeus) while the rest of the school went cross-country running. When the stragglers were finishing the seven kilometre run, I’d climb down and sprint a hundred metres to work up a plausible sweat. Competition was the rage then.
Dragooned by work colleagues, I was entered in the first Fun Run in 1975. With a writer’s distaste for all but poetic oxymorons, I walked nearly the whole course, and vowed never to do anything so foolish again in my life. It took 65 minutes and I was only 24.
By 1984, I was an executive and expected to do the right thing _ wear a tie to work and join the superannuation fund. Mortality was at least a possibility. I was asked _ read “”ordered” _ to help with the Fun Run _ to join in the “”fun” by slopping out Staminade to sweaty bodies listening to nauseating boasts about “”PBs” and next month’s “”meat” _ I later learned they were talking about “”meets”.
Eyes glared at me around the management table. Was Queen, country and the company to be betrayed? This is what happens when you appoint executives so young. “”Come on, out with it. You’re doing what?” they asked.
“”I can’t help with the Fun Run, because . . . . because . . . . (There was only one way out) . . . . I’m running in it.”
The general manager (the one who made me join the super fund, God Bless him) smiled: “”That’s all right, then”.
No it wasn’t. It was a mitigated disaster _ mitigated by the fact I did not have to hand out Staminade to sweaty bodies. I would be a sweaty body. And the idiots who designed the course put it in a straight line. I could not do a St Zacchaeus.
That Sunday, The Canberra Times informed me, “”We are now half way through our fitness course and we have only four weeks until the big day.” We are? We do?
I had done no exercise for 16 years. I was from the Jerome K. Jerome school. I love Australian Rules; it fascinates me; I sit and watch others play it for hours. I was weed at school. On forced sports day, I joined a group who were like the Quakers in World War I _ completely useless in the war effort and in amassing cups and trophies against the Hun _ the Catholic school down the road. We were told in disgust to play softball. So we did.
Anyway, I got the fitness writer’s first article. He said to run a little bit, then walk a little bit _ but whatever you do stay out there for 15 minutes and try to jog 100 metres without stopping. No problem, I thought. Within 80 metres my chest was going to explode. This was far serious mortality than being told to join the superannuation fund. Apparently, the “”heart-attack” comes after leg muscles demand oxygen from the lungs causing the chest muscles to work hard for the first time in 16 years.
I stayed out for 15 minutes, though. The next day, I jogged 120 metres before stopping and stayed out 15 minutes. Progress was exponential. After a while I even began to enjoy it, like lots of other non-athlete runners.
Now, The Canberra Times Fun Run is 20 years old this year. It was one of many that began in various parts of the world in the 1970s, as the baby boomers discovered that they would not be twenty-something forever.
At the same time, scientists were discovering a group of opiate proteins with pain-relieving properties that occur naturally in the brain. These are the endorphins. They are related to the pleasure centres of the brain and appear to work in a similar way to pleasure-inducing, and pain-relieving drugs.
After this discovery it is easy to see why we had a running craze in the 1970s. All those baby-boomer hippies who came off hard opiates in the late sixties on discovering that good health was not guaranteed for life needed a substitute. They found it in running.
The expression “”no pain, no gain” has nothing to do with athletic performance. If there is no pain, there are no endorphins and no gain _ no spaced out peaceful jogging in the Canberra spring.
But back to 1984. By Week 2, I was had run two kilometres non-stop and made the mistake of running on a fine Sunday afternoon. Do not run on Canberra suburban streets on fine Sunday afternoons. This is when Canberrans open their gates and mess about with cars, mowers and gardens with side gates open.
I will not forget it. It was a white pointer on legs. Endorphins were no use here, man. This was adrenaline country _ fight or flight.
I decided to surrender. I read somewhere that if you crouch down to doggies height and hold your hands up, the dog will not bite. The advice also said not to smile because you showed your teeth and would incite the dog. I was not smiling.
The owner stopped washing his car and called his dog. “”Don’t worry, mate, he wouldn’t hurt you. He’s just playing.” Sure, just like David Attenborough’s whales play with seals.
I toyed with the idea of fitting a poison spike in the toe of my running shoe like the old Russian women in Dr No, but changed my route instead.
Silly me. It was spring and I had not though of running with an umbrella or an ice-cream bucket with eyes painted on it on my head. The magpie attack took about a minute off my five-kilometre time.
On Fun Run day, I ran the 10 kilometres in 55 minutes. At 33, it was a long way of the Great Confluence.
I have run every Fun Run since except when overseas. The event is a coming out of hibernation. It is too cold and dark to run more than once a week (at weekends) in Canberra’s winter.
It is now a ritual _ like the annual rituals in European cities. Perhaps it is a replacement for some for annual religious rituals, a human need.
But I could not genuflect. The most the tendons of the upper thighs _ ravaged from alcohol, age, winter and skiing _ could manage on Thursday was a light stretch before ambling into the North Canberra dawn after a late finish the night before. The sun popped over Mount Ainslie at a few minutes to seven. Why did they ever put the Fun Run back to September, instead of October?
It is too late. A decade of experience tells me: I will swig the green fluid from the Scouts near Kings Avenue Bridge, and the anabranches and tributaries on the remorseless river of time will say: “”Keep on running for another year before you can act your age.”