Last week a good friend completed her first 10km fun run, at the same time raising $1000 for an autism charity.
Felicity is, in her own words, an "overweight working mother of three" whose capacity to fulfill any goal more selfish than showering daily vanished about a decade ago.
Long-term planning is one of the first casualties of parenthood (closely followed by a waistline and sobriety) and so Felicity's announcement five months earlier that she intended to complete the Bridge To Brisbane event was met with some scepticism, not least of all by Felicity herself on a bad day.
In the ensuing months, her training plans were beset with all the predictably unpredictable joys of parenting young children - vomiting bugs, head lice, social dilemmas, soul-sapping waits in crowded emergency wards - not to mention everything else that gets lumped under the banners of running a household, holding a marriage together and keeping a career on course.
When the only opportunities to train meant running in the heat of midday or in the thick of driving rain, Felicity seized them nevertheless. But her progress was slow (hampered by a painful toe condition called Morton's Neuroma) and a week out from the event she had still not run more than 5km in one go.
It would have been easy for Felicity to pull out at this point but to do so would have meant letting down not only her chosen charity but also her children, who had by now become excitable fans of their mum's lofty endeavour. To watch a parent set a goal and then simply give up on it is one of those pivotal childhood observations that can't be undone with even a hundred rousing lectures about "always doing your best".
And so Felicity ran. She ran and she hurt and she ran, stopping only once to rub her burning toes and for a nervous wee in a temporary toilet, and she crossed the finish line within 10 minutes of her original goal.
"It's done and I survived!" Felicity later blogged on her parenting website (www.mooreformums.com.au). "It's not flattering to boast about your achievements, but I've worked so hard for this. I set a goal and I've achieved it. Me. Me!!"
I could not have been more proud. She is not a runner by any stretch and couldn't have picked a goal more incongruous with her busy lifestyle, but she did it to both prove a point and to make a difference.
"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance," said American author and advertising executive Bruce Barton.
Moreover, running is hard. It is lonely and unforgiving and, if it wasn't so painful, frightfully dull too. But running is also still the most natural application for our original physiological design and the only activity guaranteed to shift the excesses of our age in the most efficient manner.
I took up running when I quit taking anti-depressants. Who can afford therapy? I quickly discovered that running simultaneously clears the mind and challenges the brain. You don't even have to go far or fast to experience the sensation - you just have to pick a direction and start running.
US Olympian PattiSue Plumer said: "[Running] teaches us to challenge ourselves. It teaches us to push beyond where we thought we could go. It helps us to find out what we are made of. This is what we do. This is what it's all about."
Maybe it's not that profound. At the very least, I hope my friend has discovered running's most exciting side benefit: the kids can't catch you.
carrieon@bigpond.co m
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