An Interest in Passing

Some years ago, I wrote “Confessions of a Jogger” The Confesions of a Jogger which detailed my less than athletic jogging career. Most of the events mentioned in that story occurred before the Federal election of 1993. That was when I had a heart attack and was rushed to Sir Charles Gardener Hospital. The good news is that I did not die! However, while I was there, they did some other tests and few days later the Registrar came in and asked me, “How long have you had diabetes?

“I don’t have diabetes,” I stoutly replied.

The Registrar then showed me a string of figures showing conclusively that my blood sugars  were well above normal, several  hours after I had eaten anything.                                                                                   Oh, well, I conceded, maybe I do have diabetes.

Fortunately, the recovery therapy for heart attack and diabetes is pretty much the same. Medication, Exercise and Diet.

 So, I started taking tablets for cardio vascular disease, hypertension and diabetes type two. I also started eating meals that were higher in fibre and lower in salt, sugar and fat.  I started walking on a regular basis. After my slow rehabilitation from my heart attack, I started walking any where from 45 minutes to 90 minutes each evening after tea.On weekends in the footy season, I would walk along the beach  footpaths  between  Whitfords , Sorrento and the Hillarys Marina. Generally, I would walk one way until half time and then turn around and then head home. As an Australian Rules game of football lasts for two and a half hours, including quarter time, three quarter time  and half-time breaks, it meant I was walking about two and a half hours each Saturday in the footy season. In the summer months I used to walk the circuit around the Swan River foreshore from the picnic parkland near  Coco’s Restaurant, over the Narrows Bridge, along Riverside Drive, over the Causeway and back to the South Perth foreshore. It was about ten kilometres and it took me just under two hours.

My doctor as quite pleased. My blood pressure and sugar levels were satisfactorily with in the acceptable range.

In fact, on one occasion my doctor leaned across his desk and intoned in confidential terms, “Noel, you are one of the lucky ones. You know, the best thing that can happen to a middle-aged man is to have heart attack and not die.”   Obviously, I looked rather sceptical because he continued more effusively.

“ You see, Noel, if you survive the heart attack, you will then modify your diet and change your lifestyle and this will help you live a longer and healthier life”

Well, he was right, of course. But the happier, fitter me was not really thrilled by the  fact that when I went walking almost everybody passed me. I would be moving along Ocean Boulevard like Burt Lancaster, as the bemedalled native American Olympic athlete, Jim Thorpe in Man of Bronze, when young mothers pushing prams would move passed me as if I as standing still.

Not only young mothers. Groups of older ladies. I was in my mid fifties at the time. Heavily engaged in conversation, blue rinsed elderly women would breeze past me.I tried to look like I was just out for a leisurely stroll and not a heart attack victim on a power walk for self-preservation.

It should have been humiliating, but it wasn’t. Fortunately, I was quite used to this embarrassing phenomenon of apparently standing still while the rest of the world passed me by. I had been groomed to always be the person who was passed. This grooming took place when I was a fit and healthy 26 year old in 1965. I had recently returned from three years working and living overseas. It was the long, summer holidays and every day my friends and I would meet up at North Cottesloe Beach.

Two of my very good friends were Sean and Tim Walsh. They were middle distance runners and competed each Saturday at Perry Lakes Stadium for the Scarborough Athletics Club. Sean and Tim generally ran in the mile race on Saturdays at the State Athletics Association’s weekly competition. Later they competed in 1500 meter races,  At various times they both won the State Mile Championship and Tim was the first ever winner of the City to Surf Race over about a ten mile course. They also both won the State Marathon race over forty-two point something miles  and later on, whatever the equivalent is in kilometres.

“So,” I hear you impatiently asking, “ how did these  two blokes give you your penchant for always being passed?”  Well, the simple fact is that I was the  key cog in the training regime that enabled Sean and Tim to kick away in the final straight of a long, long  race.

I was their Sprint Bunny! Just like greyhounds and whippets chase dummy rabbits around the track, I was the dummy bunny that Sean and Tim used to develop their sprinting technique. After a hard day of surfing, swimming, talking, eating, lazing in the sun, watching beautiful girls at very close range and the odd game of beach cricket, Sean and Tim would say that it was time to go to Tomkins Park for some training. I would accompany them, not to improve my sprinting technique because such a thing did not exist, but to be their dummy bunny.

On arrival at the park, a sprinkler, about eighty yards away, would be selected as the target. Sean and Tim would mark out a starting line and I would stand about four yards in front of them. One of them would yell “Go” and off we would sprint. Well, they would be sprinting. I was executing what some would say was an animated fast walk.

Anyhow, I would be in front for a very  few seconds and then my friends would surge past me to the sprinkler. We would then walk back to start and repeat the process, this time with me off an increased handicap. However, it did not matter how big my handicap was. In every race I would be in front and then suddenly I was coming third in a three-person sprint. The only time I felt embarrassed by these  constant defeats was when we arrived at the sprinkler just as a bus travelling along Canning Highway pulled up right near where the sprinkler was positioned. All those passengers peering out of their window as I stumbled in dead last. Sean and Tim used to time the races so that we always finished when as bus was pulling in on that busy highway. Oh, well, I thought. It is not so bad. It is a different set of passengers each time. That was my considerable contribution to the glorious athletic achievements of Sean and Tim Walsh.

Actually, I had had a similar experience back in 1956/7 when I played in The Mt Lawley Cricket Club Colt’s Team. It was an Under 19 competition. Also, in this team were four boys from Wesley College. I went to Aquinas College and I had seen these boys run  magnificently in the Greater Public Schools Interschool Athletic Carnivals. One of these boys was Jim Wieland who won the WA State 100 yards sprint champion trophy on several occasions. The other boys were the Hawkins brothers whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. The oldest boy was Kim and he had two younger twin brothers.  They all could run like the wind over any distance from 100 to 880 yards.

When we were fielding the Hawkins boys were at First, Second  and Third Slip. Jim was in the Gully and I was at Point. For those not familiar with cricket ( I know this blog is read by people in Russia) imagine an analogue clock face with the batsmen in the centre of that clock face. The slips, gully and point positions would run down from the 12 o-clock position to 9-0 clock, which would be me fielding at Point.

Now when a batsman square cuts a ball, it generally goes between gully and point and so Jim and I would be expected to chase after the ball. However, these Wesley boys were very competitive. Whenever the ball was cut near the slips, gully or point Jim, the Hawkins boys and  I (sometimes) would all set off after it. Often, it would be hit nearer to me. For a while I would be in front but not for long. As sure night follows day, Jim and the Hawkins boys would flash past me  in pursuit of the ball. Being passed by Jimmy Wieland and the hustling  Hawkins boys stood me in good stead for those similar experiences with Tim and Sean Walsh and again, in my later years, almost anybody out for a stroll.

In fact, the only time I was really embarrassed because of my viscous running style was when I was principal at Three Springs Primary School in the early 1980s. I was coerced to go in a Community Fun Run for a good cause. Fun  Run is a massive oxymoron.                                                                                  I discussed this incident in detail in my blog about jogging mentioned above. It was a run of about ten kilometres and we sought sponsors for the worthy cause. It could have been in support of Athletes Anonymous which is set up to talk middle aged people out of participating in Fun Runs or Parents Versus Student sports contests. On this occasion I was breathlessly stumbling into the final kilometres when my thirteen year old daughter Jane, went skipping past me with some of her high school friends.

Now that is humiliating.