The mobile camera photo is an unlikely group selfie. Taken outside the colourful piss-stained toilets of Beach Green, the salty sea wind is whipping round the folk gathered on the concrete concourse. A persistent misty drizzle is raining down from the heavens.
I am leaning in at the end with a vague facial grimace at this fresh undertaking. The photo is something of a mission statement, a historical testimony, a line drawn in the sand. This photo is of a newly assembled running group about to commence the couch to five kilometres over a twelve-week period in the name of better mental health.
The grimace is real. I am embarking on a serious journey into enemy territory, already waving the white flag of surrender whilst clasping a blueberry muffin to my chest. I am signing on the dotted line for a heart and lung expose and big physical reveal of the highest order. I am pushing levels of fitness unreached since my early thirties, camped down firmly at the cosy couch end of the five kilometres.
The running group is a dirty half-dozen from the wilderness backwaters of Sussex, varying in ability, fitness, and muscle memory stamina. The A-team ranges from the instructors who have experience of Iron Man, triathlons, and marathons; to the po-faced breathless novices, including a local geezer who slipped a spinal disc on the way over while stooping to pick up his trainers.
Fifteen months earlier, as fit as an untrained asthmatic whippet, I was busy undertaking my own loose make-shift regime from the couch to five km. It was proving a hard nut to crack. I was jogging under the cover of darkness for peace, quiet and anonymity of the streets.
I would plug myself into the running app, stick on my hip-hop playlist, and beat the neighbourhood of Shoreham-by-Sea as the night drew a veil over proceedings. I would take in the millionaire mansions of Mill Hill, jog past the new build terraced flats of the Ropetackle down by the River Adur – spurred on all the way by the liquid beats of Dre, melodies of the San Francisco Knight’s, and laconic drawl of Kendrick Lamar.
Wheezing like a roach, or a man toking hard on a twenty-a-day habit, I pulled up after the first of these night runs with a strained calf. I took this as a sign from the Universe as to whether I really wanted to engage in this running lark.
Either way, it all ended when life became a landslide and the Blackheart Man, my nemesis, my Voice torturer, torched all my best laid plans and came hunting for my soul deep into the first Lockdown. I had run out of pavement on the night streets with no names.
And sitting outside a nearby coffee shop, sipping flat whites from throwaway cardboard cups, the dirty half-dozen, the six misfit strangers from across Sussex, make a concrete pledge to slide off the couch, put down the tea and biscuits, and get into the Lycra get-up-gear and trainers for this weekly taskmaster running exploit. Weather permitting, naturally.
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