View from the sofa: Desert love affair threatens cherished loneliness of the long-distance runner

The One Show BBC 1

Shaun Marsden proposes to Susie Chan at the end of the Marathon des Sables (twitter.com/susie__chan)

Chia seed snacks, beards and doom metal: it’s difficult not to have mixed feelings when something you love is picked up by the masses. On one hand, you feel pride that there is evidential proof that you were tuned in to what the zeitgeist of the future has turned out to be. But, on the other hand, you’re forced to look for something else in search of something new and weird.

At least for fans of Jürgen Klopp, the poster boy for football hipsters two years ago, the pain is over. The time for resigned sighs when people with limited knowledge of football name-drop the quirky German is finished, now that he has announced he is leaving Dortmund. The cool people can now move on to Julen Lopetegui or Javi Garcia (if you need to ask...).

Ultra-runners – who in our experience appear to be a pleasant, if slightly addled bunch – will have had the sorts of churning emotions that come with their obsession of choice being thrust into the glaring light of public consciousness last week when two representatives from their beloved sport appeared on The One Show.

That’s right: two people who partake in a sport where pain, vomiting and chafing in places where the sun will never shine are all regular hazards, took their place on a sofa usually reserved for mid-table Hollywood actors, family-friendly comedians and plant experts.

“But this is ours,” runners may have thought. “Will this mean that the trails and solitude we desire will be cluttered with fans of mid-evening telly when we head out for our long run this morning? Will our favourite races be overrun with entrants next time?” Probably not, but fear leads to irrational thoughts.

Ostensibly the pair – Susie Chan and Shaun Marsden – were on The One Show to talk about their experience in the Marathon des Sables, a six-day, 151-mile race over the Sahara Desert in Morocco. And they did, for a couple of minutes. And in doing so, they didn’t exactly entice regular folk to don some gaiters and head into the sands.

Marsden had “issues”, as he put it, at the end of the first day – which in layman’s terms was hurling his dinner as soon as it hit his stomach. And, they conceded, in a race where you have to carry every calorie yourself and require a hell of a lot to schlep through the desert, his condition was far from ideal.

The long-distance community could relax – their sport was being portrayed as bloody hard and therefore undesirable to anybody barring masochists.

But then Matt Baker, the presenter, revealed the real reason why Marsden persevered, despite blacking out and being close to being removed from the race on medical grounds: he proposed to Chan on the finish line. Images were shown of the dusty, knackered pair in an embrace (she said yes) and immediately unmarried people will have marvelled at Marsden’s idea. There are few gestures more romantic than risking death to ask your girlfriend to marry you.

So if you like running long distances and you saw your routes crammed with besotted couples over the weekend – the sport you love suddenly overrun with starry-eyed young lovers – blame Chan and Marsden. You’ll have to find something else to occupy your time. Hey, there is always the study of obscure continental fooball managers. Or even doom metal – that’s nowhere near popular yet.