Keep It Real

EVERY RUNNER KNOWS: IF YOU’RE NOT MOVING FORWARD, YOU’RE NOT RUNNING AT ALL.

- Lisa Abdellah

ON MY REGULAR RUNNING ROUTE I encounter an alarming number of running imposters, who threaten the very existence of us real runners. As though on the set of John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever, they jig from side to side, lurch back and forth, and run round and round in dizzying circles.

Every real runner knows that if you’re not moving forward – i.e. in the direction you’re supposed to be running – you’re not running at all. To find out how some folks get it wrong, I approached my running coach Sean Tait of Off the Mark Training, which is basically a Centre for Runners Who Can’t Run Good.

It’s Tait’s job to kidnap these Promenade Pretenders when they least expect it, truss them up in a straitjacket so they can’t move (in any direction), bundle them into the boot of his car with an agility ladder and some plastic cones, and then cart them off to his top-secret training facility (it’s in Rondebosch, behind the bowls club), where he teaches them the error of their running-technique ways.

I asked him what in the name of Caroline Wöstmann the Promenade Pretenders think they’re playing at – and how each of them wastes energy.

Drinking beer isn’t a waste of energy; but when it comes to running, pretending to is. The Beer Chugger – usually a guy in his early 20s, who used to play rugby – brings each hand up to his mouth, which demands giant, ridiculous arm movements, and even bigger strides. The only time hand-to-mouth action is warranted is when you are drinking beer – or when you’re sprinting, and maximum power is favoured over conserving energy.