Tuesday 20 July 2010

Running

Over the last 7 days I have been asked by someone in the real world why my blog is called Runs Like A Gay and I told him my quick glib answer but I think I owe the full excuse to all of you (including A. if you're still reading).

When I first started this blog the ultimate aim was to use it to talk about my running and to inspire my training programmes. Unfortunately whilst I enjoy running it's very difficult for a amateur jogger to make the nip round the block seem in any way interesting so I've spent most of my time on the more social filmic posts. That's the running bit. I also wanted to give it a faintly comic edge on the theme of the popular children's insult of running/throwing/catching like a girl - the truth be told most girls can run/throw/catch much better than me so there had to be a variation. As I am gay it seemed an obvious word to use.

Now I realise the potential for a play on the word to be taken as offensive, I even suspect that I have lost some 'hits' because of it, but I am from the Lenny Bruce school of insults and imagine that the more we accept words as just collections of letters then any potential hurt from their use can be completely wiped away.

Anyway this week I went out 5 times, ran a total of 57.1 km over 5 hours, 36 minutes. It wasn't a great time, but these included the first of my longer runs on the road to the Nottingham Marathon, so I'm just happy to be increasing the distances.

By the way the glib answer is that you can tell I run like a gay because I listen to showtunes on the i-pod. You should see me huffing and puffing my way up Prestwich clough trying to both run and do Velma Kelly's dance moves in Chicago.

4 comments:

Simon said...

My sister saw the name of your site and thought people would be offended because you were talking about gay people like they were a seperate species altogether. I told her you (proprieter of site) was gay, and she said something I forget, and then I made a sandwich.

Runs Like A Gay said...

I've never been called a proprieter before - I thank you for that even if it makes me sounds like a minor character with an ominous cough in a Dickens novel.

I do wonder what your sister said. And what was in your sandwich?

Simon said...

Some ham I realized was modly only after eating half the sandwich. I might die.

Runs Like A Gay said...

I'm hoping you haven't died, not over a ham sandwich. Horrible thought...