Pictures of You

There’s nothing like a horrifying race photo to shatter any illusion you had that you look like a graceful gazelle when running.  The camera, they say, never lies.  They said this before Photoshop was invented.  They also say you learn many things about yourself when running.  I learned than I am slightly knock-kneed (oddly, it is not noticeable except when I running).  I see the camera and try to look good, but I can’t control limbs.  Race photographers have this amazing talent of capturing on film the exact moment in which my knees collide, rebounding one leg off into space.  In the resulting photo, with my lanky legs (already ridiculous looking in that they are the diameter of a rake handle) flying in twelve directions, I appear to be running broken-legged — which in a way is most impressive.  In another way it makes you wonder how it is I manage to finish a race upright.  Lucky for me this awkwardness is recorded for posterity.  And this memorable race photo can be mine for the low price of [weekly paycheck]. 

My disobedient legs have always behaved as though they’ve never been introduced to each other.  Legs, I always say, you are a team and must work together.  This never works.  Before I know it my knees are crashing and my lower limbs are moving in two different directions.  My lack of coordination is, to be the opposite of modest, legendary.  Bizarrely, it is, in fact, the very reason I started running as a kid.  Forced, as grade school teachers are apt to do (or were apt to do back in the 1980s), into athletics I needed to find a team sport.  My preferred participation in double-dutch skipping, hopscotch, and 4-sqaure did not meet the approved definition of sports in my school.  I was expected to play a “real” sport.  To be a team-player and blah blah blah.  Therein was the problem.  Some people are natural athletes.  Husband is some people.  These people tend to bug me, but that’s just envy disguised as annoyance.  Other people are best described as eager, but hopeless.  I am other people.  I was only saved the childhood indignity of being picked last for the team by the pity of my dear friends.

In my hands any sort of athletic arm extension (think bat, racket, stick) becomes a weapon of mass destruction.  Lucky for the general public, my friendly fire is normally self-directed.  Add a ball or other projectile (think frisbee, puck, birdie) and you don’t want to be around for the outcome.  It’s likely to involve a trip to the ER, more often than not for a head injury.  I was the girl to whom they said ‘what a shame’ when my long legs failed to dazzle on the basket ball court.  The only rigid six year old in gymnastics.  The one who sank in swimming.  The one scoring a goal against my own team.  Sigh.

To my credit, I was endearingly enthusiastic, trying out for teams year after year despite certain rejection.  Eventually I was sent where all kids in my school were sent when they couldn’t play “real” sports.  To the cross-country team.  Training for XC, in my strange school, amounted to thrice weekly participation in the Kilometre Klub.  Unexpectedly, the club gave me a tangible, measureable goal – I couldn’t, to save my life or win a game, score an actual goal, but I could work towards running a particular distance.  I can’t remember how many laps around the grassy school yard equaled a kilometre, but I was determined to (however agonizingly slowly) reach my distance milestone during every run.  My lack of athleticism, let me assure you, extended into the world of running.  But three things about XC made all the difference to a non-athlete like me.   First, unlike on the track, no one paid much attention to the XC runners and shielded beneath the tree canopy I could do my own thing without worry of peer judgment.  Second, the mass start meets, compared to wee little heats on a track, are so big chances are you’ll end up somewhere in the middle of the pack, which is a nice change for those with sore butts from so much bench sitting.  Third, just by running you could score points for your team, which sure beats goals against.  I still regret that my participation in XC ended after I was freed from mandatory athletics in grade ten, but I’m certainly fortunate to have stumbled back into running later in life. 

So when people ask me why I run the answer is easy.  I run because I can, knock-knees and all, no equipment required.  Even though my long legs look all kinds of wacky in those photos, look up and you’ll see I’m almost always smiling.

Title Reference: The Cure – Pictures of You.  From the album Disintegration.  1990.