The Power of Twitter, football... and yes, running

For the third time in as many seasons, the fixture calendar was kind to me in April, allowing me to take in The Blades against Bradford on the eve of the Greater Manchester Marathon. It makes for an indirect route from Bristol to Manchester, but it does mean I get to see friends before the match and fit in some last-minute endurance training without it harming my taper. Because trust me, the pain of ninety minutes of watching The Blades puts into perspective that of running 26.2 miles in over twice that length of time… and none of that emotional and psychological training impacts the legs!

Now, most of the friends I meet before kick-off these days are fairly recent additions to one squad where quality always outshines quantity. One constant is Mick Rooker, whom I’ve now known a scary twenty-one years, from when I used to “work” at Bramall Lane. The day I don’t meet Rooks before kick-off will be the day when I’ve had to pay for my own ticket… not that that’s why three years ago I named him my all-time favourite Blade on Ian’s blog, you understand! He’s earnt that label through a series of mishaps and anecdotes that get retold every single year to anyone passing by as I meet him outside The Lane. He does the talking: I did the writing.

Once inside the ground, I usually meet Auntie Dawn. She’s been sitting in the same seat for years, although I did question my sanity last month as I couldn’t spot her from what I thought was nearby to save my life. Turns out she’d got to the ground, couldn’t find her season ticket card, gone home to look for it only to realise it had been in the car all along… so she missed the first fifteen minutes. At least my sanity was as intact as ever – whatever that means.

It’s in between these two cornerstones of my annual pilgrimage to the Home of Football that magic happens. Because that first and last meeting are a given. But meeting new faces, shaking people out of my phone and bringing them to life in the real world – that’s the magic part.

And that magic began on April 27, in The Golden Lion and then in the South Stand, when I first met Ian and Paul respectively. Back then, having watched United draw 0-0 against Preston before running my first ever marathon, I wrote:

“If meeting Rooks and Pikey [photographer] was my post-match highlight, meeting Ian before and Paul at half-time were my pre/during match highlights. Much as I’d never met them beforehand, I already counted both of them at friends: and our encounters in The Golden Lion and in the South Stand only confirmed I’d got that one right. Friendship is not about having known someone for a long time or having seen them on hundreds of occasions: friendship is about having a common connection, being able to start up a conversation even if you’ve never stood face-to-face before because you know there’s common ground to talk about and discuss. Sadly a lot of that common ground is represented by United’s lacklustre season, with a side helping of running talk, but it’s common ground nonetheless. I just wish I hadn’t looked such a prat by going up to the bar in a pub just a few hundred yards from The Lane and ordering an orange juice with soda… it just felt wrong. But what’s a wannabe marathon runner to do?!”

Well, that saved me typing it all out again…

…we also met before last year’s equally enthralling 1-1 draw against Leyton Orient, this time the three of us (and my childhood friend Mauro, during his brief stint living in Sheffield) at the Legends’ Bar within Bramall Lane. So yes, make that three draws entailing a grand total of four goals in three seasons! As I wrote for Ian’s blog recently, I witness better performances from United when I see them closer to my physical home rather than my spiritual one. So much for home advantage – or can the mighty Bramall Lane crowd be a source of undue pressure for our red and white wizzzards? Go figure.

This year the three of us met in United’s International Bar. Nobody seems to know where the name comes from, and there are certainly no references to 1994’s Anglo-Italian Cup during which I sent off Dave Bassett (have I ever mentioned that? erm…). But it’s a good place in which to take in the pre-match b… er, orange juice and soda (!) – and meet up with fellow #twitterblades. This year, with an added sprinkling of #runnerblades.

Both Ian and Paul had run this year’s Sheffield Half Marathon, revamped after last year’s no watter fiasco. I’d run its previous incarnation on May 16, 2013, when it took me along roads that belong to my childhood and ended on the running track in the now-demolished Don Valley Stadium: but last year it clashed with the Greater Manchester Marathon, and whilst I would normally never choose Manchester over Sheffield…

Just as well I did, too, as the Sheffield Half was cancelled due to water never turning up for the aid stations – although many duly ran it anyway. Ah should hope so, an’all!

This year’s Half Marathon was organised by the team behind The Yorkshire Marathon, the route changed to make it far more challenging. Some were surprised I wasn’t running it: I can see why, but equally I’ll already be spending seven weekends away from home for races… and my brownie points account has a very strict overdraft limit! Besides, had I run it myself I wouldn’t have learnt so much about it from listening to Ian, Paul – and Karen, whom we met at the bar! Unsurprisingly Bridgette wasn’t far away… and I even bumped into Darren, a friend of thirty years ago when he lived next door but one to an aunt and an uncle of mine with whom I spent a summer while my parents were by my late paternal grandfather’s bedside in Italy. Back in 1984, we were brought together by a love for United and terraced alleyways cricket: fast forward a few decades, and I tracked him down via… Twitter!

It was great to hear Ian, Paul and Karen recall their strides, as well as the build-up and ensuing elation. Details change: but the tone, the feelings, those are common amongst all runners. I could hear my voice in theirs, going back to my first half, Bristol 2012. Not that it was the first half for any of these fellow #runnerblades: Ian had run the Sheffield Half a decade or so earlier, Karen’s run a couple of Great North runs, and Paul…

…well, as for Paul…

…Paul had run the Edinburgh Half Marathon in 2012. He didn’t do himself justice that day, having strained a calf playing squash a few weeks earlier. I used to play tennis four times a week, but haven’t picked up a racket in three years now – I learnt my lesson from Paul, and I learnt it well!

But that wasn’t the first lesson I learnt from him.

It was reading Paul’s tweets about training for Edinburgh which made me think I could have a go at this running malarkey. Those tweets were often exchanged with Kelly, another Blade who was training for a 10k at the time. They spoke a language I could understand, outlined motivations and goals that I could relate to. They told tales of suffering and struggle, if not quite in Mandela-like terms: but told them they did, demystifying running to someone who genuinely used to hate it. To someone who’d enjoy watching Cram, Coe and Ovett (and that order’s not purely alphabetical), as well as Peter Elliott, but who knew he’d never be like them so why bother? Much better to play proper sports, with scores and winners…

…Paul and Kelly unwittingly enticed me into the world of the normal runner. Of the runner who works, leads a normal life, eats normal stuff – and, a few times a week, laces up and runs a few miles. Because that’s what normal, sane runners do. And that’s what I began doing in April 2012, inevitably blogging about it from the outset, because that’s one of the reasons most of us run – and if you don’t take my word for it, take James Adams’! I still occasionally go back to those early posts, to remind myself of where I was four months after my brain surgery and to renew my gratitude to running for how it’s helped me. To running, and to those who got me started…

…and, in a relatively short period of time, running’s taken me full circle. I’m still an average runner, although I do run further and faster than I did three years ago. I still find a lot of inspiration from people on Twitter, their actions and their words. And, because I tweet a lot and run a fair bit, I appreciate that people draw some of their inspiration from me and from my ‘story’, too, including the bit about me running in spite of having the occasional epileptic seizure – which is second nature to me, but makes for a good story… well, an ‘unusual’ one, anyway…

…and that’s why it felt really good to be in the International Bar last month, surrounded by Blades who have inspired me and to whom in turn I’ve hopefully given something back. Because that’s how running works: you need to find the energy somewhere to lace up, and only a fraction of that can come from within. Seeing what others are doing, how they are pushing and extending their limits, always helps. And a novice runner eating away at their PBs will always inspire me more than elite athletes running at paces I can’t even dream of.

Paul’s running Manchester next year, and I expect it’s only a matter of time before Ian signs up. Paul ran a 20-mile training run earlier this week: it’s the sort of thing that pops up on Strava and has you questioning your friends’ sanity! Twenty miles, just because he had a day off?

And that, my friends, is when, a split second later, I take a step back, think about some of the runs I’ve posted lately, and suddenly understand why people are posting the comments they are… at which stage I smile, take another look at the runs my friends have put in, and use that runspiration the next time I lace up.

So thank you, Twitter, for enabling new friendships. Not that I knew what to do with you when I first signed up some six years ago: I’d just follow Stephen Fry, hoping for a #followmestephen, scramble together five names for a #ff, but I wasn’t engaging with anybody…

…then I discovered #twitterblades and started engaging with strangers who shared a common passion: THE BLADES! Because that’s what Twitter is for. There’s the other site to keep in touch with people you actually know.

Then two Twitterblades got me running… I was soon turning to others for running advice, too… then I saw Ian would often talk running (and beer) with some guy who went by the name of mazymixer…

…and that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is when the trap door truly opened, leaving me to precipitate into a dark underworld of half marathons, marathons, ultramarathons… of anti-chafing techniques, of nutrition advice, of kit recommendations…

…and, ultimately, friendships. Friendships where people offer me a room before a bed, asking me if I want my toasts buttering right after jumping out of the toaster or whether I’d rather the bread cooled a little first, offer to pace me to target times…

…and offer to crew for me on a 95-mile race that’s not that far away now. An offer they extend to include their fiancée and, unbeknown to you, to their parents. Before you know it you’ve got four people giving up their weekend to travel to Scotland and follow you around, with nothing in it for them but eternal gratitude. And that’s after two other people had seen your tweet about thinking of entering the ballot and instantly offered their services, too…

…it’s a bizarre world, at times an overwhelming one, but boy do I love it.

And that’s where this post, which I started writing in my mind in the International Bar over a month ago, ought to finish. But, courtesy of the latest shenanigans at FIFA, a postscript is in order…

. . .

…no world is perfect, and running is no exception. You have Russia’s strategy of importing Kenyans and Ethiopians runners and bestowing upon them Russian passports, roubles and vests: now my view on the topic in general may be a tad narrow (namely, that you should only be allowed to represent your country of birth – and I say that as someone once entitled to dual nationality), but the systematic nationalisation of elite athletes from countries where only the most phenomenal rise to the national top is just plain wrong. And there’s doping: of course there’s doping. Doping is everywhere. Do we catch all the cheats? Probably not, much as we’re getting better at it. The phenomenon is worse in some sports than others, but don’t let anyone ever tell you their sport is immune… So sure, the world of running is not perfect. At the other end of the scale, you occasionally come across recreational runners with an elite athlete’s attitude to his fellow runners: never a good mix.

Nevertheless, on the whole, the world of running is a cleaner environment than the world of football. If radix omnium malorum est cupiditas (the original version of “money is the root of all evil”), then football’s at a disadvantage compared to most sports in keeping a clean slate. The irony there being that money pours into football because of its global appeal, in turn a result of its simplicity and the passion it stirs up from the squares of Florence (home, once upon a time, to the barbaric “calcio fiorentino”) to the beaches of Rio, from the dusty narrow streets of Lanus near Buenos Aires to the green fields of Sheffield…

…that’s why we love it: and that’s why sponsors love it. We identify with our team, our tribe: individual sportsmen come and go (as did, sadly, Alan Woodward, a Blades legend who passed away last week): but those colours, those badges live on. My all-time favourite tennis player remains John McEnroe, but I can hardly continue to ‘support’ him. Whereas The Blades, my Blades…

…it is a love that transcends logic, of the truly unconditional kind that one would otherwise only feel for their children: even spouses have a side of a bargain to uphold. But you can’t fall out of love with your team. You can, however, fall out of love with the game: and FIFA have certainly eroded at my love for international competitions, in which the game itself often appears to play a secondary role, enabling the circus around it rather than taking centre stage, just like Juventus all but wiped out my interest in Italian football, of which my knowledge as a child growing up near Genoa truly was encyclopaedic.

I won’t ever completely fall out of love with football: it’s in my blood. But, in my middle-aged quest for purity and passion, for a sport in which I can believe, in which effort and reward are more truly aligned… well, running’s overtaken it. It helps that at my level it’s not confrontational, that I set out to do my best with little regard for those around me, whereas most other sports inherently require a loser for you to win. It helps that I’m in charge of my own schedule and routes, that I can take in fresh air and stunning views during training even when the legs are tired and the performances suboptimal: every run gives you something, even (sometimes especially) bad ones. That ‘something’ often includes endorphins, source of a good mood. And, when you turn on the radio to hear the scale of the accusations levied against the people in charge of a sport that was such a fundamental part of your make-up as a kid, you need all the endorphins you can get.

The power of football and the power of running: so different… And then you have the power of Twitter: the power to unite people who share common passions, to allow people whose paths would otherwise never cross to energise each other. For runners, that’s one helluvapower.

p.s.: I use the hashtag #runnerblades instead of #bladesrunners because a) the former is more akin to #twitterblades and b) the latter reminds me of an athlete I’d rather forget. Now, if you’re a Blade who runs… get yourself on Strava and join our club!
(Even as a virtual running club, it’s not just about the running - it never is.)