(June 2021)
Turning 60, which I did towards the end of 2019, is one of the best things I have ever done. I feel like I have entered a different category in life, one where feel senior enough not to have to care so much about what people think. And now that I am looking back from what my parents’ generation would have classed as old age, I am slightly smug that I reckon that I managed to bypass middle-age on the way. Even the downside, that I have almost certainly entered the last quarter, has the upside that it focuses the mind more on what you really want to do; the bucket list, if you like.
Which brings me to the decathlon. It turns out that mine is a very small bucket, but decathlon is definitely in there. I’ve always wanted to do one; ever since I was about fourteen and was the only teenager I knew who preferred athletics to football. I was quite a good all-round, school boy athlete at that age, though that was due in part to me having got my growth spurt over earlier than most of my peers. The hurdles continued to get taller after that, but I didn’t. My performances might have drifted closer to the average since then but I’ve never lost my love of athletics and a decathlon still feels like the pinnacle of the athletics mountain, albeit a considerably lower one than Mount Olympus in my case.
Rattling around in the bucket with decathlon was to try the pole vault. Pole vault is itself one tenth of a decathlon, so is a necessary precursor anyway. When I was 40 I decided that I was too old to try pole vault, when I hit 60 I thought, “Just go for it!” So last year, before Covid struck, I managed to do an introductory taster session with the North East Pole Vault Academy. It turns out that pole vault isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Even the very first exercise of planting a pole eighteen inches in front of your feet and allowing the pole to carry you those few inches horizontally takes a bit of getting used to, but by the end of the session, on one of my attempts, I did manage to get over a piece of rope suspended around two metres off the ground. If I was being generous I could allow myself to tick off pole vault but I think I would be cheating myself if I didn’t go over a proper bar, however low, and I certainly won’t complete a decathlon unless I do.
Over the years there have been two main issues which have resulted in my never doing a decathlon. The first is my propensity for injury. In part this is because of past injuries which tend to compound each other, not least a calf injury that meant that I struggled to string together more than a few runs at a time before it tore again. I’m mostly on top of that particular injury now, but it has taken 20 years. It’s not helped by the fact that I am, as a physio once described me, very asymmetrical. My left arm can reach up 4 inches higher than my right and while my legs aren’t anything like as extreme my right side does get its own back a little in the leg department. But most of all it’s my own fault; I’ve always tended to push myself in training until the pips squeak, rather than building up gradually.
My other problem, as with all the things I’ve thought that I would like to achieve, is a tendency to distraction that would make a butterfly look like a still-life model. My particular issue with decathlon is that I also like just plain, ordinary running. Running has an almost spiritual quality for me and a run through the countryside is the finest form of meditation. Provided that I’m not injured the temptation is just to go out for a run. This might not seem like a problem but the decathlon, or at least the first nine events, is about power, not stamina, and you can’t successfully train both at the same time. I need to focus on that bucket.
I can do a bit to nullify the injuries side of the equation but, as everyone who does sport knows, injuries are a bit of a lottery. Focus, on the other hand, is totally down to me. Last winter, I went out for a run, just aiming to do 3-4 easy miles towards improving my time at the 5km parkrun. For no apparent reason my calf went after about a mile and I limped home in the snow. On one level it was frustrating as it was another step backwards, but it also made me more determined not to get distracted. I just know I will though. So the best way that I can think of to keep me on track is to commit to it in black and white. Hence this post, which I intend to follow with occasional updates charting my progress, or set-backs, until I can remove decathlon from the bucket. What with Covid restrictions and the inevitable potential for injuries, it might not even be this year, but it will need to be sooner rather than later; I don’t expect that 70 will be quite so generous.
Raven on the Wing 