No sex please, we're runners

I love Runner's World magazine. It's often got impossibly ripped people on the front, and pictures inside of abs the kind of which belong to models and/or elite runners. Eye candy, even if in my wildest dreams I couldn't find the time or motivation (or stay away from the icecream) long enough to train enough to look like that.

But that said, the variety of body shapes and sizes at longer distance events is astonishing, and brilliant. A quote from the a recent Runner's World article by Mark Remy on Rules to Run By includes a gem of a quote: "Not everyone who looks fast really is, and not everyone who looks slow really is." I'd also add that not everyone who looks intimidating and unapproachable really is - appearances can be deceiving in many ways.

Last year I went to a road race event. Local clubs were heavily represented, all age groups and speeds were on course. Once their race was over, a group of teenage lads sauntered around having ditched their race singlets. Unlike many of the Runner's World cover specimens (but probably like a lot of the runners on the inside pages with their shirts still on) these young guys were skinny, pale-chested and ropey, but they were working it, big time. They probably had picked about the most receptive audience-for-body-type possible!

So is there eye-candy at running events? Yes. Does it matter? Only as a side show, or until everyone gets sweaty, snotty and muddy enough that we're all pretty much equal. Grovelling is grovelling, no matter how it's packaged.

I could ask my husband for the male perspective of sex appeal and running, but he's training for the Christchurch marathon and has gone to bed early. Like I said...

Memorable runs - they're not always the fun ones!

Addition to the list of things to guts through - running on late Saturday afternoon. It was hot, well 23C or so (hot for Wellington), and had I not made a pact to run with a friend, I wouldn't have gone. Leaving home when my family were sitting on the back lawn with cups of tea? Less than 20 minutes into the run I was thinking I should have stayed, but I'm pleased I went out.

I would put the grovel factor at about 6/10 (it wasn't that long); the grot factor at about 8/10 (hot and sweaty, and had baked beans for lunch); the company factor 10/10 (love running with friends); recovery factor 2/10 (felt rubbish afterwards).  But there is a certain satisfaction in noting a run the paper diary and in here, especially after two days off (1 planned, one too busy to think).  It'll be a run I'll always remember.

It always amazes me, when I look back over my running diary, that I can place most of the runs, even those on the tried and true local circuits. There's almost always something memorable about each one, either for the delight of a great run, or the happiness of finishing a rough one. Thinking about the last 20 km of the Kepler, these tough ones are probably the most valuable to me - not that I'm wishing for more of them!

Happy trails.