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The day I gave up running (or slightly accepting getting old(er))

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 12/01/25 18:00

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Very, very self-indulgent this. In fact, I thought long and hard on this little sabbatical space about whether I should write it or not, but then I realised that almost 4000 blogs ago, I wrote that this blog was for me, not for anyone else, really just memories and thoughts, writings about things that I was doing now for maybe for reading for later on then.

I was a runner (there I said it… was). I always, always ran from when I was a little boy. When I was a basketball player in my youth, I ran for fun in fact, I remember running a 10k in 36 minutes when I was in my teens, not actually being a runner, but just turning up to a 10k race and running it in 36 minutes for fun and then going off to do something else.

I tried for years and years as an older man to run under 40 minutes but never managed it.

And then I went to university, and I got fat between the ages of 17 and 22 (really fat). 

At the end of that stage, I started running when I lived in Glasgow with two other mates of mine who'd done the same as me, trying to shift some weight, trying to get back to exercise and then I moved to Nottingham and met Alison.

And then I told Alison that I was an athlete. Alison looked at me and laughed and said, "You couldn't run for a bus", and so we had a bet that I couldn't run on a 2.2-mile track around the country park without stopping. If I stopped, I would have to muck her horse out for a week, and if I didn't stop, she would get up in the morning before I went to work and iron my shirt every day for a week.

I managed to go and get to the end with the smell of shit up my nose.

 And then I kept running; in 1996, I did the half marathon in Nottingham at a pretty decent pace, and I just kept running for fun all the time, several mornings a week; if I had a gap, I could fit in 30 minutes of running - it was great.

I never formalised my running till about 10 years later when I started to take up triathlon, and then I got quite good at running (at least for me). I even managed to get to the stage where I ran a 1.38 half marathon at the end of a half Ironman and a sub 3.50 marathon at the end of an Ironman.

And then I couldn't, so I stopped running and became an 'I was a runner'. 

I had pain in 2016. I went to see an orthopaedic surgeon when I was training for the Barcelona Ironman. He told me I could never run again after he looked at my MRI scan.

I knew that.

It was terrible; it was something that I really had to process because it was such a terrible loss for me, but just a few weeks later, my friend Tim died, and all of the thoughts of running and not running and all of that was washed away by something far greater, far more terrible.

And so, over the intervening years, I've harboured all of these wishes and urges and dreams and beliefs that I'll just get back to it, maybe I'll just go for an operation and have something done, maybe I'll drag my leg in an Ironman marathon and get one more medal, and then I was out on New Year.

I've thought about it a lot; even last Christmas, I was trying to run. I went back to my diary, and things were terrible. I'd really hurt myself again, but I kept trying and thought that somehow I would manage to work my way through or even walk an event or do something daft like that, but the leg was bad at Christmas, like the worst it's ever been, and it made me sad.

And then we went out on New Year's Eve, we went to a curry house which was 'bring your own bottle', and I went to the pub, and I got some drinks, and I went to the curry house, and then I was outside in the cold between the pub and the curry house with my sore knee, and I realised I was never going to run again.

I don't know why I thought about it then, I don't know why it came to me there, but I realised it didn't matter anymore.

I had been a runner, but I was not a runner now, and that was okay.

It was a metaphor (yet again on here) for so many other things for people of my age, things that I used to be able to do so easily, so clearly, so effortlessly, that I can't do now, but it's okay.

What I was doing was spending time with people I love (see the previous blog on friendship). I was deciding that I didn't have to get up early to exercise on New Year's Day; I didn't have to prove to other people (who I didn't know) that I was good, better, faster, or stronger.

I had crossed the line and crossed the threshold into another level or layer of contentment that I'd never really seen before.

And so, On the 31st of December 2024, I stopped running almost 8 years after I stopped running, but that's okay because there are lots and lots of other things for me beyond running (and all those other things that I can no longer do). 

 

Blog Post Number - 4050

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Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
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