In the past few weeks I have been getting to know the third
significant athletics track of my lifetime.
*
The first was the lumpy gravel loop that Maidenhead AC calls
home, situated in a cluster of rugby pitches just a gentle breeze from the Braywick
sewage works. Having moved on to pastures new, I now resent the joint-pounding
hardness of the rutted home straight, the lack of grip and the horrific damage
the cinder does to a pair of spikes, but without it I would never even have had
the choice to take up sprinting. The next closest track is Eton and my parents
didn’t have the time to take me what with two other boys with commitments and
passions of their own to raise. I am grateful for its existence, but that
doesn’t save it from holding the title of Comfortably the Worst Track I Have
Ever Run On by Miles.
 |
| Note the puddles. Note the uneven surface. Note the colour. |
One solitary floodlight, barely above head-height, is tasked
every Tuesday evening with lighting the whole track, a task at which it fails
admirably. Three sides of the track are shrouded in gloom for the entirety of
winter, rendering sprinting impossible. Distance runners, seemingly unaware of
the existence of the peculiar creature known as a “sprinter”, meander all over
the place and dodging them without anything but the faintest illumination is
all but impossible.
Too poor to ever lay a tartan track, in a futile yearly
attempt at respectability every summer the council would paint wiggly white
lines on the track, y’know, in an attempt to disguise it as a normal running
track. Within weeks the white paint would be scattered and dispersed by a
combination of the footfalls of Nike-shod runners and the ever-dependable
British weather. It was about as effective as painting sand at low-tide. Not
only that, but the Maidenhead track is the only one I’ve ever seen that has an
eight-lane home straight, a seven-lane top bend, and six lanes for the second 200m.
It’s also 440 yards. It’s that old.
For some reason, it’s not a place that I associate with good
weather. I can remember times that it has been nice – one Easter it was so hot
I trained shirtless – but owing to training mostly coming to a halt when school
finished the scorching mornings and glorious warm evenings spent on the
Southampton track are slower to come to mind than winter dreariness and
three-minute runs.
The saving grace is the people. There’s a great little
community of dedicated athletes and coaches and since I started there a decade
or more ago the junior section has grown massively thanks entirely to their
commitment. I reckon I’ll try and do the same when I’m a bit older.
*
In comparison to Maidenhead, running on the Southampton
track was like running on a red carpet. A close-up: the foot comes down, spikes
dig and grip, rubber compresses minutely under pressure, stored energy, the
rebound. Repeat ad infinitum. A world away from slap-and-slip Maidenhead.
One of the feelings I most associate with the Southampton
track is freedom. It is literally a big, flat infinite space to run into as
fast as I can until I decide to stop. Neither going nor coming, just running. This
is true for all running tracks to some extent, but the spacious green geography
of the Southampton Sports Centre and its role as shelter from pressures of
academic university life intensify this feeling in me. We dealt with some grim
weather over the three years I trained in Southampton, but as I mentioned
before, the sunny spells linger in the memory moreso than the storms. When it’s
hot it’s almost like a dare: I’ve done
your warm-up for you, now run fast. And then when you’re spent the warmth
and sponginess of the track will afford you a lie-down.
 |
| Come at me, bro |
But with pleasure comes pain, and with a greater level of
dedication to my running, the Southampton track at times began to resemble a
place of self-imposed torture. That’s barely an exaggeration. The sensation you
find at the lowest, deepest fire-(or tartan?)red circles of fatigue is one of being
wasted, if being drunk was agony. You can barely think, and you certainly can’t
walk, not for a while at least. Not until your stomach is heaved empty. Eh. Worth it.
I should also stress the amount of time I spent on the
Southampton track. A rough estimate points to about 700 hours over 2 ¾ years,
which actually doesn’t sound like that much to me, but I guess when you think
that’s 700 hours, or a solid month of intense exercise it starts to make sense.
A significant chunk of my life has been spent there with a slowly shifting group
of like-minded people who have become some of my closest friends. I’ve written
about this bond before. Then I graduated.
*
The autumn just gone I ended up back at the deserted Maidenhead
track for two months, training alone. A regression in lifestyle, a regression
in running surface. Without a car I had no choice – Eton was too far to cycle.
Eventually, though, I got a temp job in Slough and with it enough money to
afford car insurance.
The Eton track, owned by the school but open to the public,
is enclosed entirely by trees, tightly enough that it is scattered with fallen leaves
and twigs. The trees serve to keep the wind at bay, mostly, so the place feels
quiet, hushed, collegiate; this in contrast with exposed Southampton and its
gale-force headwinds. One evening a few weeks ago a thick fog rolled in, so
dense that visibility was around 50m. There were few people there that night,
so every now and again a jogger would loom out of the mist, whiz by before
being swallowed again. Surreal. The expensive stands enclose a gym, sauna,
decent changing rooms and, best of all, a rubberised indoor 60m straight.
And the track. Oh my.
It was re-laid in early autumn and it is perfect.
Southampton’s feels dead in comparison. I float. You float. We float.
Even before training here regularly Eton was my third
most-visited track, owing to all the district inter-school athletics events
held there. These were some of the best days of my school life, and not just
because I nearly always won, but also because of proper team spirit and the
dependable good weather. Our relay team also wiped the floor with every other
school in the district.
*
Tomorrow after work I meet up with some of the Windsor
Slough Eton & Hounslow sprint coaches with the hope of finding a group to
train with for the first time since June. Chapter three!
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