“Do I have to buy special exercise trousers? And trainers? Can’t I just do it in jeans and Converse?”
“No. You’ll chafe.”
“I won’t. I do everything in jeans and Converse.”
“Well, you won’t look… proper. We need to look proper.”
“Proper, in bras.”
“Yeah. Except for the bras.”
If any of this is giving you de ja vu – well, first congratulations! You’ve won my attentive reader prize, which consists of a hand-decorated baseball cap, a party blower and a Chupa Chup – and secondly, you’d be right. I wrote about doing the MoonWalk last year, then did it, and now I’m doing it again.
I’ll be honest and say that the sacrifice of walking half a midnight marathon in a nattily-decorated bra seems to have lost its cache somewhat since last year, because suddenly everyone around me has become a runner. Just casually, like humphing yourself around for five kilometres on a Saturday morning is as pleasant and desirable an activity as making eggy crumpets in front of Saturday Kitchen. Nobody sent me this memo.
I mean sure, we all went out and did a few wheezy laps of the park after Super Saturday last year. That’s a given. But now I discover many of you carried on, quietly, sneakily, casually doing running, getting better week after week while I was ignorantly sofa-bound, experimenting with new and exciting ways to eat marzipan. I went to watch the marathon on Saturday, and aside from the inspiration and awe at the things a dedicated human body can do, my main shock was just how many of you are at it. Loads of you. It’s incredible.
As a side note: what happened to ‘jogging’? Nobody seems to jog anymore. It’s understandable, because ‘running’ sounds impressive while ‘jogging’ conjures up images of pudgy men in sweatsuits lolloping after a bus. But still, I can’t help feeling jogging was more modest as a physical pursuit. “I’m off for a jog,” sounds like you might trot around the block once, while “I’m going for a run” suggests the kind of full pelt pavement contact only really required when there are zombies or dinosaurs involved.
Anyway – neither running, nor jogging, but power walking as if our lives (or at least breakfasts) depended on it, my Moon Walk compadre and I have two weeks left until the big night. Considering that this is Jo, with whom eight years ago I invented the rule ‘Never run for a train. Simply miss it and retain your dignity’, we definitely have something to prove. Which probably means she can’t do it in jeans and Converse.
(By the way, if you would like to sponsor us and support the Walk the Walk foundation for breast cancer research, it’s here)
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