Running at a Loss
How many of us have repugnant recollections of PE lessons?
Boggy pitches; musty, ill-fitting kit; hockey ball-shaped bruises; mildewy changing rooms; erratic showers that alternately scalded and chilled one’s skin…
And as for team-picking – that had to be the most humiliating, elitist practice in the whole world! Hovering at the back in my aertex T-shirt and pleated blue wrapover skirt, nibbling my nails and gazing at the grass to shield my hurt eyes, as the popular, colt-legged girls who always got to be captains fought over who would NOT have me in their team.
‘You have her.’
‘No, you have her.’
‘You!’
‘No, you! We want some chance of winning this game.’
I could never fathom why being less than magnificent at hockey or netball laid me open to the kind of contempt more appropriately reserved for murderers. My inability to whack a ball or aim one through a hoop invited the foulest sarcasm and derision.
Why, though? In English, I didn’t jeer at those who couldn’t write legible essays. I’d have been sent to detention in no time. Why should PE be the only lesson in which name-calling and expletives were not only permitted but positively encouraged?
I am no sloth now, I hasten to add. I love keeping fit. The teenage me would have won the vote for Girl Least Likely to Ever Attend an Aerobics Class – yet there I am, every week, star-jumping and spotty-dogging away down the leisure centre.
In schools, though, it’s all about contact sports, competition, teamwork, not letting your house down. No emphasis on the physical benefits. I thus misguidedly saw exercise as a chore, rather than a means to acquiring a svelte waist and a spry heart rate.
Anyway, I think a good part of my problem was that I possessed a beanpole physique which gave the erroneous impression that inside it lurked an athlete.
‘But you’re so tall, Leigh,’ fools would comment, ‘you ought to be BRILLIANT at netball!’
To me, this was about as logical a hypothesis as: ‘You’ve got green eyes – you should be good at art!’ or: ‘You’ve got black hair – I bet you’re a real whizz at cooking!’
People seemed disappointed when the truth dawned: that I boasted all the athletic prowess and co-ordination of a female Frank Spencer.
I utilised every excuse in the skiver’s handbook at some stage during my stretch at secondary school (feigned ailments, fictitious dental appointments, ‘forgotten’ kit, etc), which was, admittedly, not the best method of endearing myself to teachers.
Now if one hour a week of PE was purgatory, then Cavalcade Day – the pretentious title my school bestowed upon that summer day when lessons were abandoned in favour of sweating it out on the racetrack for a few poxy house points – was my Waterloo.
I reaped no personal gain from it, and thus regarded the event as an utterly futile use of my time. I knew I was a total dud at Games, and resented having to prove it to the whole school. It wasn’t as though they ever staged writing competitions or spelling bees, where the likes of me might have exacted revenge upon illiterate hockey players.
The house I was in scraped the booby prize
every year – which, though surely not entirely due to my presence, could
not have been unconnected to it either.
I bunked off a couple of the Cavalcades - the last one being in 1994, when I
was in the sixth form. I was very nearly an adult, had a chip on my shoulder
about still being at school at all, and certainly took huge exception to being
forced to play hockey in some kiddy sports day. I much preferred to spend the
day in bed with my 27-year-old boyfriend.
But it is the 1992 contest that forms the subject to the the following cringe-making
anecdote...
Cavalcade mornings were devoted to team games, which were compulsory; the track events, in the afternoons, were optional. I always dodged the athletics – save for in July 1992 when, as a puppy fat-ridden 15-year-old, I somehow found myself coerced into the senior girls 800 metres.
I was ‘volunteered’ the day before the contest – because, allegedly, no other girls in my house were available. To me, this amateurish approach defeated the entire object of a sports day. I mean, Linford Christie won Olympic gold in Barcelona that same year – was he selected for the 100m solely because nobody else could be bothered to enter? Somehow I suspect not.
Joking apart, a half-mile slog was no mean feat for a girl who required hospital treatment after a dash for the bus. Even if afforded sufficient time to train for the run, I’d have been at a total loss as to what ‘training’ involved – such was my ignorance about exercise and the anatomy. It was really quite dangerous.
In a nutshell, the idea of Leigh Rowley running a race was as ludicrous as Gareth Gates running for Prime Minister. It simply wasn’t me. I was an academic; a swot. I had no feasible hope of winning – or even coming third – a fact of which I was aware even before learning that my opponents were a trio of coltish sixth formers who had represented the school at county level.
My paranoid, adolescent theory was that our PE staff sadistically proposed my name for this impossible mission to make a very public fool of me. If this was their objective, they certainly achieved it.
Limbering up on that starting line was an experience lifted straight from one of my more surreal dreams. It was a scorching afternoon. My skin and brain were already melting as though waxen, and the crisp, salady scent of the freshly mown track prickled my hay fever-prone nostrils. I had never ‘limbered up’ for anything in my life; the puny bit of knee-flexing I attempted two minutes before the starting pistol was a decidedly feeble parody of it.
The four of us squatted into position in our staggered lanes. The adjudicating teacher fired the gun – and it all went awry from there.
I rocketed away as though competing in a sprint. ‘Pacing myself’ was an alien notion; I just presumed speed was the key to victory in any race. Regrettably, this approach does not quite work in a long distance hike. After a few seconds, my paltry energy reserve was spent.
As my Lara Croft-esque rivals dissolved into the distance, I truly thought I might die - from exhaustion or embarrassment, either would have done. I was all but stationary now, yet somehow persevered with heaving my jaded, shapeless body around the interminable oval.
Pitched as I was against three superb runners, I was denied the dignity of finishing last by a proverbial hair’s breadth. Oh no – I wilted over the finish line a full FIVE MINUTES after the girl who came third!
It seemed more like an hour, though, especially when I had THE WHOLE SCHOOL as my audience: 500 blurry faces dotting the grassy banks that surrounded the circuit.
As I at long last shuffled and wheezed towards the finish, they began to clap. Every pore of me was ablaze with shame. I knew their applause was borne out of sympathy rather than admiration, and I felt totally patronised. Such was my proud nature, I would sooner have endured their customary disdain than this embarrassed pity.
If nothing else, this little episode taught me that anyone who can survive humiliation on such a public scale can survive absolutely anything.
© Leigh Rowley, 2003
Inspiration...
It's another true story - sadly - and also written for toowrite.com (I didn't win the £1,000, by the way, in case you'm a-wonderin').