Those Two Impostors
This is a terrible confession, I know, but for a long time poetry, for me, was a waste of time. Until the persistent efforts of friends - one of whom bought me "The Nations Favourite 100 Poems" - began to bear fruit. Maybe it was the old reason - school somehow managed to put me off it for 60 years. (They nearly put me off running, too, but that's another story.) Couldn't connect with daffodils waving in the breeze and all that stuff which has to be spoken in a sonorous, sing-song voice. Norman McCaig writes about the mountains of Scotland in a way which makes an impression. And of course, The Nations Favourite Poem has meant more recently. You may have to suffer my poetic efforts on this page in the future. Sorry.

Whenever I'm racing, I keep saying to myself "I'm not a competitive person. Don't care where I finish". It's all lies of course. As soon as an old rival hoves into view, legs receive the order to get a move on; never mind the pain. (As Max Stampfl said to Roger Bannister while training him for the Four Minute Mile, in an Austrian accent of course, "It is only pain, Roger. You must learn to ignore it".) Then maybe the result isn't what you wanted. No fanfares of glory, no gold medals, no feeling of smug satisfaction. I came fourth in the World Masters one year and found myself bitterly disappointed at just missing out on the medals - the worst fate of all, I said, like losing in the semi-finals. Then, luckily, sense prevailed. What rubbish! You finish where you finish, you do your best (always, of course, swearing to do more training for next time) and the result is the result. Same with winning, too. Smugness is a terrible thing. Eschew it, throw it out, don't let it fool you. Let Rudyard Kipling come to the rescue with his "two impostors".

A friend has the theory that the two impostors are the same thing. To quote him, after a recent exchange of emails, "Methinks you and others have confused triumph and disaster as disparate and separate things, but now you have admitted that emotion and reason are odd but interesting bedfellows". He cites an example from his own experience, of two runners battling it out for glory near the line. One falls and the other, who is marginally ahead, stops to help his friend, who then collapses over the line to win. But who won?

When I see the saddening triumphalism in professional sport, I'm glad I'm in a real sport (in the old-fashioned sense of the word), where none of us would even question the necessity to stop to help a fellow runner if they fell, or were in trouble. I remember being appalled that no-one, no-one , stopped to comfort Paula Radcliffe in that well-publicised, Olympic Marathon some years ago. It could not happen in fell running.

Alex M
01.05.2008