UPFRONT:WHEN I WAS in national school, we used to run races in the parish priest's enormous back garden on sports day. For reasons that were strangely unclear to me, Niamh Byrne won every time.
To explain: For most of national school, I was the size of a postage stamp. Niamh Byrne was Amazonian in comparison. I was aware that there was some difference in our athletic physique: there must be a reason, I judged, why the sleeves on her traffic warden uniform did not have to be rolled up 10 times, and why the hem didn’t trail in the puddles when she marched onto the road. Yet despite such obvious indicators, and the fact that every time our class lined up according to height, she was at one end, and I at the other, for some reason it still astounded me every time she beat me.
And she wasn’t the only one. Come sports day, there was I – running surely at the speed of light, wind gusting through my hair (which was bigger than the rest of me at the time), and the countryside streaking by as my legs pumped harder than any legs have ever pumped before, a bionic whirr of speed, I imagined. Yet somehow Niamh Byrne and the other gazelles of St Brigid’s fifth class would stride casually past me to the finish line.
Wonder was finally replaced with the realisation that that maybe, just maybe, I was not the superspeed elfling of my own fantasies. That perhaps I wasn’t cut out to be a sports star, no matter how great my enthusiasm and self belief. That unless they made piggyback racing an Olympic sport, I’d never be up for a medal.
Truth is, I just wasn’t much of an athlete. I couldn’t even win a game of hopscotch against my little sister, let alone a race. I could barely master lolo-balling and sevenses, and was eternally defeated by swingball (any idea how embarrassing it is to be beaten by a fixed pole in the grass? Surely this was a sign to hang up my tracksuit forever.) Come secondary school, my athletic shortcomings were ever more obvious, as years of my life were whiled away on the sidelines waiting to be picked for a basketball team. Even the three-legged race was beyond me, given how hard it was to find a partner with legs of a similarly Lilliputian length.
Sure, I got a momentary fillip when I saw Maradona at 5ft 5ins run rings around the English team. Suddenly, having a low centre of gravity appeared advantageous, the mark, perhaps, of an athlete of prowess. But the similarities between El Diez and myself only went as far as unruly barnets, when it came to fancy footwork and dexterity, I was no World Cup striker.
So I resigned myself to the sidelines and finally admitted, after years of boundless enthusiasm and spectacular sporting failure, that Fiona into sports don’t go. And in the Irish spirit of acceptance – nay, celebration – of one’s limits, nobody ever challenged me. Until I made friends with a German, a no-nonsense adventurer who didn’t care how many times I’d embarrassed myself on the pitch or track. In German terms, she was a pygmy herself (though towering over me, at 5ft 6in), but it never seemed to get in the way of her athleticism. So when we booked a trip around the world together, she decided that the best thing for it would be to end the holiday by running a marathon. As you do.
“Ahem,” says I. “I’m not an athlete, you know. Can’t keep the egg on the spoon, keep tripping over the sack, just not cut out for this racing business.”
But there was no talking to Tanja, as she swatted away excuses and entered the two of us in the lottery for the New York marathon. Before you could say nein danke, she had me out pounding pavements in various stop-offs around the globe.
It wasn’t easy. At first it was really hard, in fact. And when she got into the marathon and I didn’t, I won’t say I wasn’t secretly pleased. But, what had happened in the interim was a realisation that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t a total failure at running. If it wasn’t a race. And if there was no ball to drop, or team to let down. If it was just me versus, well, me. Because everyone knows, it doesn’t take much to beat Fiona McCann. So I did.
I started running. And I didn’t really stop. OK, I stopped sporadically. A lot actually, at the beginning. But then I stopped less, and less. I started running longer distances. I entered races, races where it didn’t matter if you came last, where the mere fact of finishing counted. And you know what happens when you enter an official race? You get a race number. You get applause, no matter how fast you’re going. And you get referred to, at least by the race organisers, as an athlete.
Two half marathons down, and I have my eye on the big prize next month: the Dublin City Marathon. Take that, ye giants of track and field, ye Niamh Byrnes and Usain Bolts. Turns out being vertically challenged is in fact an advantage for long-distance running – who would have thunk it? Long distance hero Haile Gebrselassie was only 5ft 4in. Granted, that’s still a bit taller than me, but not much.
I know I’m not Haile Gebreselassie, by the way. And chances are, I’m not going to win the marathon. This is not a column about how if you follow your heart and nay say the naysayers, anything is possible. Some things are not. But that’s not to deny the possibility of reinvention. Moral of the story? Act like a runner long enough, and you are a runner, my child. Shame acting tall doesn’t work the same way. fionamccann@irishtimes.com