Jogging sucks!

I hate jogging.  It is dangerous and I think the most pointless way to get from point A to point B. It ranks way up there with sitting through an entire Lito Lapid film, volunteering for board work for an algebra class, and fighting with a neighbor’s short-legged dog who always threaten me, and only me, with harm in my list of least liked activities; I may be forced to do it if my life depended on it but I won’t promise to do the act well or do it without grumbling or moping.  

I know, I know, hate is rather a strong word to describe my dislike for a pursuit that a lot of people, including many I know, find leisurely and uplifting, but I have to be honest -- I don’t like it with a passion. But before you forsake me or curse me as a clueless biker, allow me to share my back story which I will now, after bouts of inner conflict, declassify from my confidential information folder.

When I was in Grade Six my Kuya Bambi, who was about to enter the Philippine Military Academy, would invite me to go with him on his jog around the Fernando Air Base perimeter to help him prepare for the rigors of becoming a plebe in the prestigious military school.  I was not training or preparing for anything but since I was young and did not know any better, I thought it was a good idea to go with him. After all, my Kuya, who always kept to himself, had never asked me to do anything with him before.

So mindlessly I said, let’s go!

The jog, at first, was fun because it was over a stretch of backroads that featured grass, dirt, and cow and goat dung, which meant that I had an excuse not to run in a straight line, or to insert a hop here and a long jump there. I would stop occasionally, not because I was running out of breathe, but because I would notice a strand of spider thread criss-crossing some withered shrubs, and the urge to search for the arachnid that spun that yarn would be simply too strong to resist.

When Kuya and I had covered around 5 kilometers of the base’s perimeter, we would proceed to the paved roads so that he could do a few more laps around the pine tree lined oval.  By then, my interest in jogging would have waned for there were no more animal droppings to leap over nor spiders to play hide and seek with.  Instead, the oval offered more of the same thing over and over – trees, paved roads, and joggers running around in circles.

When we have reached this point, I would tell my Kuya that I had enough and would just see him at home.  But the house will wait.  I would take one last detour inside the barbed wire enclosed training camp for candidate soldiers where I would encounter more animal shit, dried grass and exciting opportunities to look for spiders.

One time as I was exploring the camp, I noticed from the corner of one eye a cow that was showing interest in my presence.  I initially thought that it was simply warning me not to touch some sacred poop it dropped some place.  But when I saw that it was moving toward me at an alarming pace, I began to pay attention to my life.  I didn’t know what the animal’s issue was against me but the way it was frantically charging meant only one thing: I should run as fast as my feet would carry me.  I bolted like a boy possessed.  I ran without a care for spiders and dung; my entire twelve years of existence flashing before me and it was nothing particularly exciting or memorable.   I knew then that I had to live longer so that I don’t die having lived a pretty unremarkable life.  What’s worse, when people would ask how I died, my family would half-cryingly, half-jokingly reply:  He got trampled on by a cow that got offended over the way he hopped over its shit. That would mean I also died unremarkably and uselessly.  I had to live. I don’t recall how I scaled the barbed fence that was almost twice as high as me, but I did.   I lived.  And one thing was etched in my young mind that day: jogging was dangerous.

But even with that realization, jogging, and running wouldn’t leave me alone.  In grade school, I was widely regarded as an athlete.  I was good at sports be it pencil fights, teks, holen, luksong baka, putbol (our version was kickball married to the concept of baseball), habulan, or – yes – basketball, where I was considered a young Allan Caidic, lefty and dangerous from the outside.  But since there was no elementary basketball varsity in my time, my PE teachers assumed that my long legs would make me a good runner.  And so every afternoon after class I would change into a running outfit (which was anything that was not my school uniform) and do laps around the school oval, which was not much of an oval, but more like a swathe of grassland with a beaten footpath that formed the shape of a weird square.  For some reason, I could not do as many laps as other runners.  Maybe the absence of cow manure and spiders had something to do with my underwhelming performance.  When we were told to do sprints, I was a distant third to Robin who was a head shorter than me, and Rene who was about my size but had far bigger teeth.  These two, by the way, also jumped higher.  The only reason why I was better at basketball was because I was much taller than Robin and Rene could only jump but not dribble, or pass the ball with purpose, or shoot the ball with acceptable accuracy.

Yeah, yeah… you could always say that if you work hard enough then you could always improve.  I worked hard, but so did Robin and Rene, so we all improved at the same time.  Status quo:  I remained a distant third, maybe even farther than when we first started training.  It was demoralizing.  It was clear that I was not durable enough to be a long distance runner or quick enough to be a great sprinter, let alone a decent one.  So early in my life I realized that jogging, and running for that matter, was pointless.

But I loved basketball.

My problem was basketball involved a lot of running.  But just when I thought that it could get no worse, my loathing for running intensified when girls watching me play basketball began calling me sexy when I ran.  I didn't know why they would call me that but I considered it an affront to my masculinity.  So while I could not avoid running in a basketball game, I made sure that I generously littered it with tricks and antics that diverted attention away from my sexy way of running and into my silly bag of tricks and antics.

 I employed different versions of running.  I did it sideward, backward and forward with a bit of diagonal movements.  I realized also that girls looked at facial expressions when I ran so I made sure that I also had a wide repertoire of facials.  I smiled a lot.  But sometimes when you are losing, smiling gives the idea that you don’t care or are not competitive enough.  So I adapted the scowl, with crunched brows and glaring eyes to communicate that I was not happy with how the game was turning out.  When I did something awesome like make a kalawit rebound, or block a shot, or in the few occasions that I have dunked the ball, I wore the lower lip-jutting-out look combined with the mean stare to suggest that I was badass.  Of course, I did all those either running sideward, backward, and forward with a bit of diagonal movements.

In fairness to myself, I did try to make peace with jogging.  When I was already working and my only time to play my favorite game was during weekends when I had to hurry home to Lipa to catch the 4pm pickup basketball games at the plaza, there were many instances when I would arrive too late to get any action on the court, or if I did, not enough to shed off the stress of work and the extra lethargy that one gets from too much sitting in front of the computer, pretending to be doing something productive.

Now, when you find the energy to burn when just a few hours ago you were complaining about being too tired because of too much work, you had to find away to release that overflowing zest  one way or another.  Jogging was the most available option.

The oval of my youth was still the same oval for joggers -- paved, scenic and with that sweet pine-scented breeze that invited going around in circles.  But the jogging of my youth was also the jogging of my yuppies years – pointless.  Maybe because jogging sucks when you are dressed to play basketball; high cut shoes and basketball jersey did not respond well with the rigors of running around in circles.  It’s like you are dressed for a wedding inside an elegant church when the event was really to be held on a beach, in the middle of summer.  I felt that the only reason my foot kept on moving forward in front of the other was to keep my body from falling forward.  There was no joy involved, no peace, no rush, not even goat poop to hop over or spider threads to distract my attention.  And I can’t vary my running style either; no backward, sideward or any wayward movement that I normally spiced my locomotion with.   I couldn’t even smile, scowl or protrude my lower lip to project an imagined badass attitude.  I’ve been exposed too much to Makati ways that I knew that joggers would find me silly or, worse, call the police to pick up a crazy man smiling, scowling and protruding his lower lip while running sideward, backward and diagonal, knocking down joggers who knew nothing but moving forward in a straight line.  Jogging was pointless.  And if I kept at it some more, I’m sure it was going to be dangerous because I had to explain to the police why I did what I did, and they wouldn’t understand, and I would explain some more, this time with more passion and vigor, and next thing you know I will be in an asylum, strapped to a straightjacket yelling “All I wanted was to play basketball!”

When I try to pass away time while waiting for my MA classes, I often find myself perched on some bench or protruding tree root around the UP oval where, you guessed right, joggers abound.  I’m no expert at jogging as you may have surmised by now, but I do have an expert eye on what’s going on in a jogger’s mind simply by looking at their faces, or the way their body parts are moving.

There are joggers that you know are meant, even born to jog.  They, with the graceful strides, taut postures and coordinated movements look perfect doing what they do.  Heck, even the way their body would glisten with sweat, or the way they look at their G-shocks without breaking stride, or how their ponytailed hair (I’m talking about girl joggers) would bounce and swish here and there as the soles of their feet make delightful taps on the pavement; these would be exactly how it would be described in a jogging guidebook for dummies.

And then there are those who jog for an assortment of odd reasons: everyone’s doing it so I might as well do it, I need a way to relieve stress, it’s a nice way to disguise being a stalker, the doctor says I should be doing something, I bought a complete wardrobe of running wear and what would I do with them if I didn’t run, etc., etc., blah-blah-blah.

So how do you spot them?  Simple.  Look at them.  You can identify them from afar.  They put one foot forward over the other because if they did not, they would fall forward.  Their body movements are not coordinated; they’re knees either don’t bend enough or bend too much; their arms flair out or move in such a robotic way that would indicate that they are thinking too much of getting the right posture; they don’t look right.  Even how they sweat do not look right – they soak, not glisten with it.

When they are near, you could see it in their eyes; they would look as if they are about to pop out of their sockets. They are either looking down to see if their feet are still there because they are slowly losing sensation of their toes and their gastrocnemius are about to tighten on them.  Or their eyes would squint, an indication that they are only running because of pride (I can’t stop now, I would look stupid) or they are trying to be heroic  (Si Ninoy nga hindi tumigil bumaba ng hagdan, ako pa kaya titigil sa paghakbang?).  If you observe that their nostrils are flaring halfway the entire width of their face, you know they are simply forcing it; willing themselves to like something that their body was obviously revolting against.  They think that the more they keep at it, the more likely that they will actually like it.  Some succeed.

Oh, and there are the special type of runners: those that talk and chatter with themselves, cajoling themselves that they could do it.  Heck, they can even talk themselves into thinking that jogging was the best thing to happen since they discovered that they could talk.  Yeah, I know.  This is UP and people at UP talk to themselves all the time, regardless if they are walking, jogging, or with other people they know.  I even had a professor who talked with himself during class.

So there.  Jogging is pointless.  At times, dangerous.

Cheers! Happy New Year!