I love fartlek. Perhaps the schoolboy that still inhabits my psyche enjoys the forbidden word 'fart'; then again I enjoy the activity, the ability to say to myself, run fast to the next cow-pat and then rest, as the mood takes me. There are twin dangers here, the danger that one might take it too easily, or be too hard on oneself. I think I err towards the latter. Here in town the landmarks are different, but on the canal I may choose to run fast from bridge to bridge, lock to lock or to the next drug addict.
I went out along the canal in bright sunshine, and threw in a circuit of Victoria Park. There were an awful lot of runners around and I begin to recognise some of the regulars now; we exchange glances and glance superciliously at some of the newer runners. "Where were they when the canal was frozen, and the birds dropped dead from the sky with the cold?' we ask one another. I must be becoming a regular, much harder to do here in the city than the country. Town runners eye each other suspiciously: the men look at me as if they are squaring up for a fight, while the women look as if they fear I will expose myself to them. By contrast, when I run on the downs, I greet every other runner with a cheery, and reciprocated, wave. We may even stop to discuss the state of the crops, when lambing might be, and that unfortunate business with the parson and the choirboy at last year's fete.
