A Few of my Favourite Things

Last March I took a month of unpaid leave to move to Denmark. At the height of ‘I hate being a stay at home mum’ I signed up for a 30 km race just to feel a rush of something, anything. The funny part was that the race was not even in March, it is this upcoming September, and in my ‘sign me up!’ frenzy I forgot to factor in that life would look very different by now and that, well, I need to train.

Why 30 km? Well, because running is one of my favourite things. Also, I have run half-marathons before and upgrading to a whole one at my age, when one starts to hear stories of one’s peers having heart attacks, felt a little too risky. Because the half of me that is really good at encouraging lying to the other half kept whispering: “ What is 10 more km? you can do this blindfolded.”

I could very well do this blindfolded, with the screams of onlookers guiding me so I don’t crash into walls. The problem is that the organisers do not require blindfolds; they require that I run. Since 2024, when I ran every race I could sign up to, my interest shifted to strength training, and since then the distance I have covered is 7 km per week at best.

And now… here we are.

Since I have no interest in beating any records, my only goal is to get to the finish line. Still, I do have some expectations, such as getting there before the organisers send a search party for me, or worse, they give up on waiting for the last one to come in and I do my final sprint to the sound of absolutely nobody cheering. I can picture arriving at the finish line only to see that someone left my medal (we all get one) hanging on a stick because they already packed up and left. I would also like to beat the broom wagon, not because I am particularly competitive, but because I do have some self-respect I would like to maintain.

All in all, my training programme over the past three weeks has been intense but so far I have managed to keep up with it. I do have to go out for my long run late on Sunday evenings, when all I really want to do is to veg out on the sofa. Also, my PT is packing my strength training sessions with Bulgarian split squats and lunges (insert nausea emoji). Given my genetics I wake up at night in cold sweats thinking I will finish the year with the ultimate Roberto Carlos legs. But what truly sends shivers down my spine are threshold runs. Those sessions where my heart is supposed to hit over 160 beats per minute make me realise how woefully unprepared I am for an eventual heart attack.

Regardless of my health, putting in so many hours on my feet allows me to reflect on one of my other favourite things: the turn of the 20th century. At some point one knows the route so well that one can see it but be somewhere else. I choose to be in London in 1905. I hear the rustle of the walking skirts, the whistle of the steam engines announcing trips to country manors, the scratching sound of the ink pens on thick paper. I see gas lamps, travel trunks, lace collars, pocket watches, library books with gold lettering, and Gibson Girl up-dos impossibly held up by three hairpins.

I draw parallels with the current state of things, and, ever the romantic, the music pumping in my ears sounds off. A 150 BPM compilation of the late 2010s just to make me keep up the tempo clashes so dramatically with the imagery in my head that my delicate soul is wounded. What music would they run to back in the 1900s? I wonder. For a few seconds I fantasise about pacing to the Radetzky March, but this question needs more research. For now, out of curiosity I type into Spotify 1900s running music, just to see if a kindred spirit has done the work for me. Spotify assumes there is a glitch in my brain: I must have meant 1990s. Surely.

Cotton Eye Joe comes up.

In retrospect I am not surprised at Spotify’s assumption of my cerebral malfunction. People in the 1900s did not run for fun. Cardio training was not a thing, and strength training was inherent to labour and toil. To be honest with you, not so long ago my grandmother (may God have her in His glory) would ask me, “Whatever for?” with genuine perplexity if I mentioned I was going for a run. Of course, she was waking up at 5 am to harvest tomatoes in her youth. During harvest time they might have sung to accompany repetitive labour. Songs like sea shanties.

I go out on a short tempo run to the rhythm of a sea shanties playlist. “Goodness me!” I say under my breath. This is not really helping.

Other favourite things come to mind. Labour rights. Women’s suffrage. Epidurals. Antibiotics. Vaccines. Mammograms, I think, as I turn the last corner into my street. My hand brushes lightly my left breast.

I steer my thoughts to fashion. Running with a corset… now there is a challenge.

Sports bras. Another favourite thing of mine.