heh heh heh

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/watch-out-here-come-the-park-run-man…

The Parkrun mantra is “It’s a run, not a race” and that “you only compete against yourself”. To that I can only give a breathy grunt. This may be true for the last half of finishers, who can chat companionably in the socialist brotherhood of those with unambitious fitness goals. But among the first half of finishers, their Morgan Stanley T-shirts strapped with multiple fitness trackers, it is every man — and it is normally a man — for themselves.

Here, the atmosphere is deadly serious, where you worry for the strained neck veins of the fiftysomething runner, his face grey, his eyes wild with masochistic agony. One man at my Parkrun emits a scream every five seconds as if he is being hit with a hammer, and I have had fantasies about doing just that. Together they form a steam train that runs on pain. Close your eyes and the silence broken by the panting and the heaving could be the sounds of a labour ward, straining to push out a new personal best.

The one rule of this game is “I must not be overtaken”. To be overtaken by a younger man means one must redundantly give way to the next generation. To be overtaken by a woman means one’s testosterone is draining away. To be overtaken by a child means one’s time on earth is up. To risk cardiopulmonary distress to stop a young woman overtaking can be worth it, to avoid this greater existential threat.