Did you take part in the Sunday Times Run for
Fun last Sunday? No, neither did I. In fact it might have passed me quite by had I not come across the official leaflet, doubtless thrown away by a disgruntled jogger. It is a fascinating document, though it didn't make me regret my absence from Hyde Park: 'Classes "6" and "12" (Men and Women 50-59) will now be run together' was on its own a sentence to chill the blood. And I don't think I should care to see a 'Three Generations Jog', consisting of 'grandparent, parent and child'.
The Sunday Times obviously thinks that it is doing itself and the nation a service by importing the American craze of jogging. I wonder. You may have read Mr Nicholas von Hoffman's disturbing article in our sesquicentennial issue a fortnight ago. He said— and I am entirely prepared to believe him — that jogging is wrecking the sex lives of the middle classes throughout the United States. And that it not the worst of its hazards. In the Fun Run brochure there is this Disclaimer: `The Department of the Environment will not be responsible for loss or damage to property or death or personal injury to persons.' (My italics.) I bet it won't; but will the Sunday Times? Mr Harold Evans already has on his conscience the fate of one blameless man, Mr 'Steve' Brodie, who, it may be remembered, felt obliged to take up jogging as part of his responsibilities as pictures editor of the Sunday Times.
This was all too reminiscent of the wartime practice of the appalling Montgomery, who would make his staff officers do physical jerks and go for exhausting runs. These were men who might once have been fit enough to command rifle companies but who had, presumably, been promoted for their cerebral qualities and had not for years done more exercise than play billiards in the mess or in the 'Senior'. Nor surprisingly they went down like flies. So it was with Mr Brodie who, sadly, collapsed and died after his first morning's jog.
Does the Sunday Times really want this example followed? Does it want Hyde Park littered with expiring grannies? If! were a granny I should be particularly alarmed to read among the conditions of entry: 'a donation to the British Heart Foundation'. There couldn't be some sort of conspiracy afoot, could there? Incidentally, I trust that what goes for editorial admin. staff goes too for the Sunday Times's illustrious writers, and that we may see Mr Hugo Young and Mr Bernard Levin sweating in their track suits. If not, it is surely a matter for the NUJ.
Of course,! may be exaggerating the physical .demands of the Fun Run. The mys erious pamphlet states that 'results will be tprinted out by the computer within an hour of the completion of each Class'. But only a few inches above is the instruction: 'Jog at your own pace but remember some will wish to go more slowly than others.' This certainly doesn't suggest an inte'nsely competitive sport. I can imagine— almost— what Lester Piggott's reaction would be if he was told to remember that some horses would wish to go more slowly than his round the Derby course. It must be a cunningly programmed computer if it can decide who has won when everyone is trying so hard not to win.
The real point about jogging is not a jocu lar one. The running craze is a symptom of our deplorable age, in particular of our obsession with health, slimness, fitness and, above all, longevity. Jogging — whether by the Sunday Times's grannies or Cabinet Ministers on the front at Blackpool — is not ,only undignified but absurd. It is a con fession that people feel that they lead displeasingly unhealthy lives, but are not prepared to do anything preventative, rather than remedial, about it. The answer for someone who thinks that he is overweight is to eat less for a while, not to leap around at unseemly exercises. And the way to eat less is, simply, to eat less. The slimming craze has produced two equally silly and sinister manifestations. There are the Weightwatchers, who are so lacking in individual will-power (and what other sort is there?) that they have to club together to stop eating. On the other hand is the fad of cuisine minceur by which French gluttons (and not only French) can lose weight but continue to guzzle exquisite food. Could anything be more decadent?
The health mania is an example of the law of increasing expectations. The populations of advanced, industrial countries are in every measurable sense healthier than any other people have ever been. Epidemics have been controlled — it takes an incident like the Birmingham tragedy to remind us of our good fortune. The condition of the people has risen vastly in the last century, not so much through advances in medical science as because of material prosperity. And yet this is, in a sense, the very thing people complain about. Never have the people been so healthy, and never have they consumed so many drugs: nowadays opiates are the religion of the people (not an original line, but to the point).
Never have so many people had so little to worry about as far as their diet is concerned, and yet never have so many people been so agitated about 'dieting'. It is a puzzling and depressing collective neurosis. I, to make my own position clear, have no intention of ever taking any serious, outdoor exercise again. I can manage to walk to my office every day, and even to walk twentyfive miles across country when I feel like it. Today, on the other hand, I feel like walking at a decorous pace to a restaurant where I can eat an invigorating, high-carbohydrate, cholesterol-rich, fattening lunch.
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