Born To Run

For some people, getting up at seven o'clock on a freezing cold, foggy Sunday morning to traipse around the streets of Mordor in search of inspiration might feel like paradise. I have to come clean and admit that I am not one of those people. However, as part of my current vocational calling as a charity journalist, I'd attached myself to Diabetes UK to cover their activity during the day's Great Birmingham Run in exchange for them getting me trackside wearing a bright blue wig. (I feel compelled to state at this point that the wig was their stipulation).

Initially I worried that I might struggle to find them. As it happened, you couldn't possibly miss them. They'd taken the novel approach of borrowing a vintage British Leyland double decker bus and parking it right across Lee Bank Middleway; a fairly surefire way of getting attention. This particular corner of the marathon route, between Five Ways and Edgbaston, was the steepest gradient of the whole course, as the athletes slogged up the slope from the Bristol Road underpass and turned the corner onto a second hill up Ryland Road. Knowing that someone who has already run eleven miles and tackled one hill is not going to be overflowing with Olympian ardour when they discover Birmingham's answer to Kilimanjaro in front of them, the DUK volunteers were there to cheer and encourage the athletes at this critical point in the race. I, on the other hand, was there to perform the slightly less helpful task of photographing the expressions of agony and despair on each runner's face as they realised that they were, quite literally, undertaking an uphill struggle.

I'd never taken any "action" photographs before, so my learning curve was steeper than Ryland Road hill. When your first practice at photographing moving subjects is with medal-winning, record-holding African distance runners whooshing past you as if they've just heard there's a half-price sale on singlets and shorts down the Bull Ring, you have well and truly been chucked in at the deep end. But after a few false starts I managed to more or less get the hang of it, and captured a wide range of runners sporting a wide range of strained looks.

I showed a few to my old man, who was for many years a distance runner with Tipton Harriers. He nodded his head thoughtfully and said, "Ar, you've really caught how much fun they're all having."