An Irishman's Diary

ONE OF THE nice things about being a middle-aged runner is that, when you enter a race anywhere, you find yourself described as a “master”. There are no qualifying times for this status: mere longevity is enough. Once you pass 40, you’re a “master”, and nobody can say otherwise.

It’s my favourite euphemism currently: part of its charm being that it evokes a second childhood. After all, the last time anyone addressed me as “master” was when I was about 11, and an old-fashioned relative sent me a birthday card with that title on the envelope.

In this sense, athletics echoes the great GAA system where you may be a “senior” in your 20s and 30s and then, when the legs go, you can drop back to “junior”: where, in theory, you can spend the rest of your life.

But the implication of eternal youth is probably unintended in athletics events. The M before your age category merely recognises the accumulation of skill and experience you are assumed to have at your stage in life. It thus places you in the same broad category as master craftsmen, master mariners, and even the Old Masters of art.

(Not that “old” is a word much used in athletics In fact, the Old Masters are problematic in this context, including as they do the likes of Caravaggio, who, although no stranger to running – he fled Rome on murder charges once – died at 38, two years before he would have qualified as an athletics master. Even Bruegel the Elder, who lived only to 44, would barely have made it in.) In truth, I haven’t felt like much of a master yet in races: no doubt that sensation will come eventually, whenever my weekly training mileage catches up with my age.

As a born-again runner, I have so far opted against full-immersion baptism, in the form of marathons or – God help us – triathlons. Instead, I’m still dipping toes in the shorter events. Of which my 2010 seasonal debut was last weekend’s five-mile race organised by the Business Houses Athletics Association (BHAA), in and around RTÉ.

The experience suggested that, never mind mastery, my apprenticeship has some way to go yet. I started out hoping to chase a good time, but the ambition evaporated with the first drops of sweat. And after a mere two miles, at a modest seven-minute-mile pace, the only thing I was hoping to master was my breakfast, which was threatening to make a reappearance.

Not for the first time, even amidst the distress, I was deeply impressed by the camaraderie of my fellow runners. As I lumbered along, trying to ignore the evil angel on my left shoulder – which was telling me to stop now, catch a taxi back into town, and then get a life – another competitor loomed at my right and urged me on.

He was a grizzled veteran, beard and all. And despite having his own race to run, he took time out to make sure I finished mine.

“Head up, deep breaths,” he ordered. “On your toes – that’s it. Keep it up.” For half a mile or so, he was like a personal trainer. “Stay with me – I’m not going anywhere,” he said. And sure enough, he wasn’t, although for a time I wished he would. Then that potent cocktail of shame and adrenalin took effect, and my crisis passed. I knew then I wouldn’t quit early, even if my breakfast did.

Back in RTÉ afterwards, I hung around for the prizegiving ceremonies, not that they involved me. And this was an education in itself. After the presentation to the overall winners, there was a long parade of M-people invited up to the stage for their category awards. Over-40, over-45, over-50, and so on, right up to over-70, male and female: the winners of which skipped onto the stage like young things. And there among the pantheon was my friend, the guardian angel, picking up his award in the over-65 section.

Running can be a life-long vocation, I was reminded. And speaking of vocations, it spans them all. Of its nature, the BHAA highlights professional backgrounds, and the participants last weekend were from every walk of life: taxi-drivers, prison officers, accountants, bankers, brick-layers.

Encouragingly, there was at least one doctor: a winner among the upper-age female categories. Which should not be a surprise, and yet it was. After 40, possession of a serious running habit seems like the sort of information you should withhold from your GP, along with the true details of your alcohol intake. So it was good to have implied medical approval for one of the vices.

It was a postman, Mick Traynor, who won the overall men’s race. He later credited some of his running ability to years of evading Dublin dogs. Indeed, his finishing time – 25 minutes 10 seconds – suggested he had been chased around the course by Rottweilers. But what was most encouraging about his success was that he too had an “M” after his name, being 45.

Not even the likelihood that we had been in different postal districts when he finished the race could diminish my share of his reflected glory. One of us, I thought proudly. A master.