On the  soapbox

Teetering on the edge

There are always fatalities on the roads. A cyclist with defective lights, a boy racer out to impress his teenage passengers, or a rider on a powerful motorbike giving the engine full throttle before losing control on a bend. Accidents, as they say, will happen.

Two more young men died on May 5^th, but these casualties weren’t on the road. They were racing at Oulton Park in the British Supersport Championship. Nine other riders were involved in the crash.

I’m not going to speculate on whether the accident was the result of a technological failure, an error in the organisation or a reckless manoeuvre by one of the riders. Honestly, I have no knowledge of the sport and, coming clean, little interest in the cause of the crash, but I still reacted with sadness when I saw the image of the men who died. Beaming smiles, bright eyes and wearing leathers emblazoned with the logos of their sponsors, they posed for the photographer, proud, no doubt, of their achievement in the sport and dreaming of glory.

How much were they prepared to give in pursuit of victory? Their skin? Their limbs? Their lives?

I expect some will have little sympathy. This accident was nothing more than the natural consequence of an inherently dangerous activity. Riders are fully aware of the risks and are prepared to take them. Indeed, the risk is part of the thrill of the pursuit. It’s what makes it worthwhile.

Imagine I tell you now that you could never be hurt. You could take on any physical challenge and breeze through it. You could walk through fire and not burn. You could hike to the top of Everest as easily as strolling along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and swim the Channel as easily as doing 25 metres in the local pool.  Great! But where would the sense of achievement be?

It’s not the ability to climb 29,000 feet, swim 21 miles or complete the laps of Oulton Park’s circuit that gives sport its zest. It’s because it’s hard. Bloody hard. And dangerous. It’s because you need more than fitness. Grit, determination, skill, understanding and courage are all required. And most of us don’t have enough of those qualities to step up. We cannot do it, so we watch, cheer and revel in the excitement when those who can do remarkable things do them.

As I write this, crash investigators are studying what happened at Oulton Park. I won’t presume to comment on the cause of the accident, but I expect those riders who walked away with nothing worse than bruises and scrapes may well be thanking their lucky stars. Sadly, Owen Jenner and Shane Richardson’s lucky stars went AWOL on the first lap. Those bright eyes and beaming smiles are no more, but for some people, life isn’t about living in nice, safe, protected comfort. It’s about being right at the edge of what’s possible – and on that edge, teetering.

We can shrug and say, so what, these riders knew they were dicing with death. But we shouldn’t forget that for these individuals, dicing with death is the very thing that makes them feel alive. It is how they have chosen to live.

Thighs, damned thighs and statistics

I love writing, running and aniseed balls. If I had to choose one of those three things to jettison, it would be curtains for the confectionery. Ask me to lob out something else to save a sinking ship, and I would be stuck.

In the forty-odd years that I have been running, I have covered the circumference of the earth and then some. I have had highs and lows. I have had, as all runners do, periods of progress and setbacks, and I have been injured plenty. Five months ago I was struggling to walk. This morning I ran six miles. I have spent almost a year getting treatment. I have sat for hours with my ankles in buckets of iced water. I have stretched and exercised, wept and raged, and every bit of it was worth the run/walk on Christmas morning when I covered three miles in the company of Donner, Blitzen and a billion hailstones. Persistence, bloody-mindedness, call it what you will, I was not ready to quit doing something that I love.

But there are drawbacks. Anyone who knows me will say that I am not massive. The average height for women in Britain is 5 feet and 4 inches. I am almost average height. I weigh approximately nine stones and according to the National Health Service, I am slap bang in the middle of the healthy weight range. And yet I cannot get my legs into a pair of jeans. If I could get my legs down them, I could fasten the button and sit down without bursting the zip. Unfortunately, I have a condition known as muscles, and according to the designers of today’s trousers and jeans, I shouldn’t have.

Now, during my extended rehabilitation period, I have learned a lot about the musculature of the lower limbs, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty: those muscles are meant to be there. Each and every one of them has a job, be it flexing the foot or stabilising the knee. Using these muscles strengthens them. Not using them causes them to waste. Jeans today are cut for people with wasted leg muscles.

You may have seen the ‘This Girl Can’ advertisements. Women are part of the human race. We wobble, we sweat, we achieve, we grow, and we develop, just like the male of the species. The Sport England campaign encourages women to be more active and to put up two proverbial fingers to the perceived notions of femininity. It’s a joy to watch. But when those same women go into a changing room, the message that the cut of the trousers sends isn’t one of health and strength. The message says: you are too fat to fit into our clothes. What is wrong with you?

I have started thinking about thighs, and calves for that matter. I walk around the streets staring at people’s legs. I may be arrested and you might think I’m weird, but my observations tell me that quads and hamstrings are no longer in vogue. The fashion for legs is parallel sticks wrapped in denim, and it’s the same for both sexes. Skinny jeans and skinny legs.

Let’s flip that and tell the truth. People do not exercise. They do not build muscle or bone mass and they risk osteoporosis. They wear skinny jeans on wasted legs. Is fashion dictating leg size or is leg size dictating fashion? Either way, it can’t be healthy.