Kickin' Through The Jogger Vomit

The alarm goes off. I push it on five minutes; I don’t trust snooze. I dream randomly and at pace. The alarm goes off again. I push it on a further ten; why I put my through this masochistic medieval torture and why I don’t just get up, I don’t know. The more times I do it, the more lurid and vivid the dreams become. Eventually, my conscience gets the better of me and I jump out of bed onto some Lego. I don’t have any children but I like to leave some lying about - keeps you on your toes.

Since the decompression I’ve felt different, not bad different just different different. Strangely I feel like I have more lung capacity, more energy, and more mania. If you are unfamiliar with the Bends, here’s what happens. Let’s say you go down ten metres and get over the shocking pain in your skull as the weight of the water crushes your tectonic plates, your lungs contract by a factor of two. That’s right you’re working on one lung. If I hadn’t used one of the oxygen tanks I’d found at the bottom of the quarry I’d have been fine, albeit drowned, so I was really all out of options. When you breathe the air from a scuba tank, the oxygen in them is at the same pressure as the water that is now crushing your lungs. An unfortunate side effect of being underwater for a while at some depth is that some of the nitrogen will dissolve in your blood, so if you swim to the surface quickly, it’s like shaking up a bottle of lemonade and undoing the lid. So this morning I had the wholly unnatural desire to go for a run.
“Come on then.” Zac looked at me like I was mentally ill. He might have been correct. I could see he’d put on a few pounds with all the inactivity and treats he’d no doubt enjoyed at Beth’s cottage. I stood on the pavement outside my house in middle of Bungaville, stretching and limbering up. Cloudy exhaust fumes chugged from my face. Zac threw me a filthy look as if to say ‘Twat’ and turned to go back inside.

Jogging, running, cross-country, call it what you will, is the most basic form of exercise you can do. All you need to do is start walking somewhere and then, as and when you feel like it, do it faster; put one foot ahead of the other faster and faster until you feel your kidneys hurt. The origins of this complex pastime, the scientists tell us, are founded in ‘running away from something that wants to eat you’ or ‘running towards something you want to eat.’ You can guess the problem. There is nothing in the modern world that wants to eat us, but somehow, the desire to run toward our packaged prey has remained. Our food chain exists on an alternative plain I suppose, financially, emotionally and socially, but the physical elements have all but disappeared. It is a shame that ‘the gym’ has become a separate entity to a gymnasium. Clive’s gym has an altogether separate association for me, but that’s largely to do with Billy’s horse-sweat. The old gymnasium at Underbelly High is largely remembered for the many dozens of children that have broken limbs in it. PE teachers come war criminals, herded shivering squadrons of young boys into the wooden chamber and forced them into playing what was known across the county as ‘Murder Ball’. On a basic level, this involves playing a full scale game of rugby indoors. On a more complex level, this involves compound fractures and serious head injuries. Why the teachers were never dissuaded from organizing this brutality considering the amount of injury they witnessed often bothered me. The words “Alright, enough is enough,” just don’t occur to some people like genocidal maniacs.

I ran round Bungaville like a man who hasn’t run anywhere for over twenty years. Jogging is not, it would seem like riding a bike. I could do this for six months and not lose the feeling that I’m not doing this properly. Finding your pace, I should imagine is the key, well that and trying to avoid bending over double and retching into a storm drain after four minutes.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Ray pulled up in the camper van. “Get in you idiot.”
“It’s too early, I know. I don’t think I’m a hundred percent.” I sat in the back of the van breathing hard and wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
“No I mean what were you thinking taking exercise man. That’s sick.”
“Sorry Ray, we don’t all have your racing snake metabolism.” It was then I realized that Mike was in the back with me. I’d been in such a state, I hadn’t noticed. What was that look on his face, disgust? He tipped me a desultory nod. “How come you two are up so early?”
“It’s Beth.”
“What about her?”
“She’s missing.”