Buggy Running: As If Just Running Wasn’t Hard Enough

Brooke Shields with stroller. See now she can afford a gym and a personal trainer. So if she 'Chooses To Run' with a Buggy, it's got to be good.

I was not born to run.  I am not motivated to run by a need to get my daily endorphin fix. If only.  I’m not sure I’ve experienced this mystical endorphin rush, unless that funny chilly feeling and nausea I sometimes get from attempting to run beyond my capacity to do so counts.  Running for me is HARD, requiring the mental as well as the physical energy to keep me going throughout the entire battling duration.  Forty-five minutes of teeth gritting and negotiations in my head that make deals with myself to keep going to the next post, the next five minutes, permission to slow down as long as I keep going and many more creative attempts to convince myself not to stop.

Yes it’s rewarding.  But in the way it’d be rewarding to have, say, cleaned the bathroom.  It has to be done.  It’s not fun, but when it’s completed there’s the satisfaction of having completed the task.   But I choose to run (as opposed to Seinfeld’s “I choose not to run”) because of its efficiency as a fitness and weight loss regime.  There is no other way to shed kilos in as little time and with as little cost.   I confess too to a certain amount of vanity as motivation.  When I see other, real, runners, I am filled with admiration.  I’d love to be like that, I think; A Runner.   So if I run with other people around I manage to keep going through the sheer determination to pretend that I am actually A Runner.  I imagine they are filled with the same admiration as I have for others as I breeze past them with a confident and relaxed stride.  Somewhat counter-productively, I run faster if they look like real runners themselves (totally unsustainable).  I then take any opportunity I can to then stop around the corner, desperately sucking in air.  If  I choose a park or track busy enough, sheer vanity prevents me from doing that.  Crowds mean fitness.  It’s fail proof.

Plus I hate gyms.  The last time I went to a “funk” class (trying to find something more interesting than the usual mind numbingly boring aerobic routines), I found myself in front of very un-tinted and completely clear glass wall separating me physically and audibly from an entire room of men doing weights, but not, much to my humiliation, visually.  It’s hard to look dignified at 35 years of age completing a Britney Spears style floor roll into standing booty grind.  I had to choose between not participating and thus appearing as though I lacked the co-ordination to complete said moves (which, girlfriend, I assure you I can) or participating and looking like a complete loser anyway.  It was a lose-lose situation. I chose to look like a co-ordinated idiot rather than an uncoordinated one.  Gawd.  I blush just thinking about it.  And don’t even talk to me about spin class. Those seats are torture. Every time I’ve attempted it I’ve ended up permanently in the standing cycle, forcing me to pretend I’m, like too TOTALLY hyped to sit down (pumping air with fist, making DJ like ear holding movements, swinging head heavy metal style to make it convincing).

So with the end of breastfeeding and the not-so-abrupt end of high levels of daily cookie consumption (ahhh, chocolate covered Oreos, how I love you), I have had to resume running.  But with Monkey out of daycare ill more than in daycare healthy, I’ve had to take up running with the buggy.  That was, after all, one of the justifications for getting the Mountain Buggy.  Not technically specifically for running, but close enough.

After my first attempt, in which there wasn’t a great deal of actual running, I spent five days wondering how I had managed to hurt my thumbs.  Opening jars? Was I THAT sedentary? Getting the buggy out of the car?  Well, possibly those things too, but I discovered the main reason on my second buggy-run; your thumbs get a serious work-out steering the buggy on a buggy-run.  You actually have to use the thumb and inner arm muscles of the opposing arm to steer the pram when you use the other arm for swing. Apparently my thumbs are really out of shape.  And that’s not all.  The pram, the weight and manoeuverability of which I have been marvelling about for months, doesn’t turn out to be THAT light when you are running up a slight incline and unable to swing your arms for momentum.  And finally, your whole weight disposition and posture has to change slightly, and you can feel the adjustments in little niggly places like ankles, knees and muscles and ligaments you never felt before, nor realised you had.  When a friend told me once that after 35 you can pull a hammy just waiting for the lift, I laughed heartily.  Not so funny now.  Now that even my thumbs have muscle stiffness.

So , I am fixed on the path not to just becoming A Runner but A Buggy Runner.  Now that I know what’s involved I look at Buggy Runners with even greater admiration than that for A Runner.  I daydream of the people pointing and nodding in admiration, giving me thumbs ups even, as they see me passing; The Buggy Runner.  I will have to choose a running track with A LOT of corners to pause for breath until the last 12 months of inactivity wear off.  I will also be wearing a pair of very pesky shoe laces that require re-tying every 500 metres.  In the meantime, RESPECT to the buggy runners, it’s not as easy as it looks.  And any tips to avoid any and all kinds of buggy running injuries and strains would be appreciated.

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