running is the answer

AL is in Trundleland

Mother Nature was in another good mood today, gawd bless ‘er. Just a couple of degrees above freezing, but again, strong sunshine. What a beaut of a weekend she conjured for Swiss runners, walkers and even some lucky gym-goers.

Someone mailed to ask what I’m doing in the gym, and it’s a good enough question to write a post about. Just annotating a gym visit as “60 minutes” doesn’t make it clear that that I’ve not spent an hour spooking the ladies in the mixed sauna, or shooting the wholefood breeze in the juice lounge.

Since just before Christmas, I’ve made it to the gym 9 times and so far, it’s been cardio all the way. That’s elliptical cross-trainer, static bike and treadmill in roughly equal proportions. Pre-Christmas I majored on treadie to reassure myself I’d be OK for the Hyde Park 10K, but since the ill-fated race, I’ve reduced gym running time, reallocating most of it to the elliptical. Following the renewed calf soreness from yesterday, today I avoided the treadmill completely, spending 35 minutes on elliptical, 20 on static bike, and 10 on the rowing machine — the first rowing I’ve done since leaving the UK. The novelty here is that the machines are lined up in front of the huge window that is the long wall running alongside the lake. So you row staring out over the lake, with the water just a few feet away. It adds an element of realism that wasn’t available at the windowless Fitness First in Tilehurst. Instead of Wormwood Scrubs chic, the scene today was a  couple of moored yachts bobbing gently, and beyond them, in the distance, the bloody magnificent snowy mountains.

When I first started using a gym, as a runner, back in Theale, I was deeply suspicious of what I presumed gym culture to be. This was based on earlier experiences when a gym was a claustrophobic, intimidating place full of bald, sweaty, neckless middle-aged men with bulging eyeballs, grunting and snarling and displaying their prowess with the free weights. That ingrained cynicism, or fear, probably contributed to me not enjoying the later experience much either, and not gaining much benefit. For a long time, my idea of a cardiovascular workout was to get onto a static bike or treadmill, hit the start button, and trundle for a  while before boredom forced me off again. These days I’m much more conscious of the interval type approach where effort is managed with a bit more thought. The training payoff is better and it’s far less dull. So on the elliptical for instance, I warm up for a couple of minutes, then alternate 2 minutes of moving backwards at a low resistance, with 2 minutes of going forwards at a constantly increasing resistance. I’ve found that this pushes my heart rate to a level similar to normal road jogging. (As you ask, this is about 135 bpm, though I’m not sure what percentage of max this is, as I’ve never tried testing it. Resting HR is usually about 49 or 50.)  That’s the aim, I suppose  – to reproduce the effort of running outside. In terms of heart rate, it’s easy to get there on treadmill or elliptical, while static bike and rowing machine tend to be around 10 percent lower.

Soon I’ll add in some strength training, but my priority has been to regain some cardiovascular fitness.

And that’s what I’ve been doing in the gym recently, as well as listening to the Ben Greenfield podcasts. Preference in podcasts is just as subjective as the sort of music we favour, so I won’t argue with anyone who gives them a try and doesn’t like them — or him. For me, they work well. Most of the main podcasts are well over an hour, so will last through an entire gym session, and are filled with the sort of thing I’m interested in at the moment: training techniques, nutrition, supplements, weight loss information, equipment, and so on. He knows his stuff, being a top competitive Ironman triathlete and ex-bodybuilding champion. I recommend people give him a go. As always with podcasts, you have to tune into the style, which can take a few listens.

Another round

Remember when I used to give training updates?

No, nor do I.

But apparently I once did. Here is nearly another one.

There hasn’t been much consistent activity to report, which explains the gap. And anyway, I’ve never been convinced that the training regime of a rotund, indolent, middle-aged plodder can be of much interest to anyone outside the psychiatric profession. People have sometimes said they find encouragement in this sort of thing, but I suspect that any comfort or motivation to be found here is more a case of “There but for the grace of god go I”.

But just recently I’ve been thinking that it might at least help to keep me motivated (which of course was the original raison d’etre of the website). I’m also aware that I have often chatted about what I should be doing and want to do and plan to do, but rarely follow up with any information about what I actually did. An assumption that I therefore did nothing at all would sometimes be correct — but not always.

The most recent revival of enthusiasm started at the end of November 2011 when I pulled my running shoes on 7 times in a 12 day period. Most of these outings were between 3 and 4 miles. As always after a lay-off, the first couple were painful and depressing, with me barely able to plod more than 2 or 3 minutes without a walk break. But persistence pays off, and the run:walk ratio quickly altered in favour of the antecedent. On the eighth day I managed 4.8 miles with just one short break.

And then? And then December knocked on my door, waving an inexhaustible bottle of wine and a bottomless bag of speciality cheese and chocolate. “Oh, er, h-hello.” Christmas this year was an unwelcome visitor I had to be polite to. The parties and bar gatherings were enjoyable, and it was certainly a novel experience to find entertainment outside the eight walls of work and home, but after the fortnight of increasingly enthusiastic plodding, I couldn’t help feeling that Christmas had been badly scheduled this year.

The raucous festive guffawing soon gave way to a silent rictus grin, and a few days later, to a sickly, white-faced frown. Sometimes the season of excess just seems to keep pouring long after one’s thirst for it has been slaked. You end up feeling like one of those foie gras ducks with a pipe pushed down your throat, into which someone empties a daily bucket or two of  organised fun and saturated fat. I got so used to it that I ended up force-feeding myself when no one else was prepared to do it. One Saturday evening when I’d absorbed so much fine Barolo that I found myself watching not Match of the Day, but Matches of the Days, it finally pissed me off enough, and the rest is history.

The Silversterlauf and its aftermath was the ideal chance to examine my navel — once I’d managed to locate it among the folds of rubbery blubber dangling earthwards from my midriff. The events of December 11 perked me up, but there was something even more pressing to haul me back on track. It will still seem a ridiculous thought, as it did then, but my patchy spreadsheet was reminding me that if there was even the slightest chance of doing a spring marathon, the fabled 18 week start line was approaching. [Aside: perhaps any 18 week period should be known as a Higdon.]

The Zurich (and London) marathons are on 22 April 2012, so the 18 week run-up would begin on December 19. I didn’t have much realistic hope of reaching the start line, never mind the finish, and following the disappointment of Hyde Park, I have even less hope now. But I supposed I should do something, just in case. And anyway, the annual trip to Almeria at the end of January is approaching fast, and if there was to be any chance of getting round the half marathon, or even the optional 9 kilometre race, I needed to dip a static toe in the water, and hope to feel some sort of current.

Much to the chagrin of my skiing colleagues, there had been no Swiss snow where it mattered during November, and hardly any in the first half of December.  It arrived in my town on Monday December 19, the day that marathon training was due to kick off. That morning at 7 a.m., I did what I always do, summer or winter, and stood on the balcony in my dressing gown, gulping alternate mouthfuls of coffee and oxygen. The scene is always different, and it certainly was that morning. As a neighbour remarked later: “Today, Christmas has arrived”.

No chance of running, but I didn’t want to give up the start of marathon training week that easily. So in the evening after work , I revisited the gym I mentioned a few months ago — the posh one down by the lake, and put in around 20 minutes on each of the elliptical, static bike and treadmill. I did the same the following evening. Two days later, I left work early and returned for a third session. This time, I hung around afterwards and had a word with one of the willowy operatives. Within minutes I confessed everything, and gave her my credit card. In no mood for mercy, she handed down a two year sentence. Three hours later I was on a plane bound for London to enjoy my final ten days as a free man.

Compared with this bleaker post-Hyde Park perspective, I was full of running optimism during that period. The day after getting back to UK, I enjoyed a damp leafy plod along the Worth Way in Crawley. Two days later, on Christmas morning, I was off for another 4 miles around the perimeter of a golf course near my Dad’s place in Harrow. I was back in marathon training, and luxuriating in complacency.

Boxing Day was time off, but I still managed a testing 4 mile walk before driving over to Reading to watch Brighton succumb 3-0 at the Madejski. This impressive stadium is where the Reading Half Marathon finishes every year, though I couldn’t recall if it was operational in 2005, when the event was saturated with representatives of this website:  Antonio d’Almeria, the irrepressible Sweder and even the majestic Seafront Plodder. Here is the report of that memorable occasion.

After the game  I met up with a couple of mates in the truly tremendous Nag’s Head, a reminder of one of the few genuinely irreproducible elements of English life. Later, I wandered back to my hotel in the centre of town, stopping off to consume the worst curry I’ve had since 1981, [WARNING - NOSTALGIA APPROACHING] when I was a student. There is no realistic possibility of a curry — even this dreadful plateful  – sinking lower than anything on the menu of the fabled Plaza Café in Manchester — and it was never absolutely clear what was on the menu at the Plaza, even though the choice might have seemed simple enough. On a blackboard behind the filthy counter was scrawled the five available items: “MILD, MEDIUM, HOT, SUICIDE, KILLER”. It was only after I’d been going there most Saturday nights at about 3 a.m., totally drunk of course, for a year or more, that Charlie, the mountainous Somali owner, revealed to us that there was a sixth item: “The Charlie Special” that he was too nervous to publicise. I never got near it. In fact, I never progressed beyond the Medium, an execrable experience that required a fire extinguisher and a visit to A & E the following morning.

Hmm. Curiously, the comments below the above link reveal a fascinating photograph of a proper Plaza menu. This must have been a later introduction. Perhaps it was an attempt to go up-market, or a chance to rebuild their reputation [I just burst into involuntary laughter while trying to type those words] after the notorious dog-in-the-freezer story, but I see that they had begun to tempt their clientele with some tantalising additional items. The menu reads: “Mild, Medium, Hot, Suicide, Killer, Charlie’s Special, Cremation, and Goodbye You Have Been Warned”. The Plaza Cafe closed 20 years ago, but from the briefest of Google searches, I see that it is fondly remembered by a generation of middle-aged survivors.

So. Where was I? Reading. Then back to Crawley for two runs in two days — and this may have been my undoing. I managed a steady 3 miles on the Thursday evening, then followed it up with a determined 5 the day after. A couple of times during these outings I tried to step up the pace a bit, mindful that the 10K was arriving shortly afterwards. Was this a mistake? At the very end of the second run, I felt a sudden twinge in the right calf. A gloomy moment, but one I hoped was just an ephemeral echo of an earlier problem. The only remedy for anxiety was a quick shower and a walk up the hill to the pub, where I spent a couple of hours leaning on the bar, talking the usual bullshit with a couple of jovial locals. Walking back down again, I was reminded about the calf.

On a brighter note, there’s been no alcohol since. That’s 15 beer-free days, and 27 since my last glass of wine. In the boot of my car is a case of 1994 Gran Reserva Rioja,   ordered some months ago but picked up only  a day or two before Christmas. I have no idea when it, or I, will finally get drunk.

As mentioned in the Hyde Park report, I’m staying positive about the prospects of  running a decent distance again, but it might be a long project. Everyone is advising me what to do. Sweder says I need a deep tissue massage; MLCM insists on glucosamine, magnesium and potassium; Glaconman proposes ankle exercises; Dan urges barefoot running. A couple of days ago I had a chat with the affable Doctor Müller who confidently advised me to “Buy new shoes with a bigger heel. One extra centimetre will be enough.” Other recommendations have included stretching, core strengthening, orthotics and shoes with rocker soles like MBTs or Fitflops. I’m very grateful for all the suggestions, and have either previously tried, or been recently trying, most of these. If and when the problem is solved, it might be hard to establish what it was that helped.

To bring this unintentionally lengthy entry up to date, today was perfect running weather: cold and sunny, and seemed like the ideal opportunity to retest the calf. Early this afternoon, I headed off into the woods for a couple of kilometres, before plunging down to the lakeside path, hoping to squeeze out the 10K of running I didn’t manage in London. But no, the right calf started tightening after 3 km, around the same distance it took in Hyde Park. Within 500 metres it had collapsed into the usual pain. This time I didn’t continue for another 7 km but turned round and walked back briskly. This is just another round in a long fight, and I can’t afford to get disheartened. Instead, I enjoyed the challenge of walking as quickly as possible up the long uphill stretch – about 800 metres – that takes me up to the end of my road. It helped me feel I must have got some training benefit from the brief excursion.

Tomorrow, it’s an early trip to the gym before returning to confront another desperate cause — QPR’s visit to Newcastle. I remain enthusiastic about my team, but I seem to be becoming more relaxed about their task. After more than half a century, I’m finally learning not to get too emotionally engaged with problems I can have no power over, and instead to concentrate on things I can influence, like the condition and performance of my own body.

I have been here before – Hyde Park 10K

Excuse me while I adjust these twenty-twenty hindsight goggles. They are causing me some discomfort.

An old boss of mine used to say, in response to a mention of the H word: “Hope is not a strategy”. I should have listened to him. The 2012 Hyde Park 10K was strongly reminiscent of the 2010 iteration, and it needn’t have been. The two years separating the races could have been better spent ensuring that I had more than hope to rely on for an improved experience.

I started today’s race with a dull ache in my right calf, and it steadily got worse, becoming bad enough to force me to limp and run-walk the final 70% of the race. These are the annoying facts, and yet I remain reasonably confident that things can be turned round.

Unlike two years ago, when the calf erupted without warning during the race, this time the damage was done, and made itself known, a day and a half ago, while I was consuming five miles of damp, nocturnal Crawley pavement. The final mile revealed the first familiar traces of cramp-like pain, and continued to transmit its presence through yesterday. The discomfort was mild, but that it was there at all was the worry. The warning flag was still fluttering when I woke this morning, and I feared I’d be lucky to make much race headway before it worsened.

Despite a couple of bad experiences in recent years, the annual Hyde Park 10K is a favourite race. It’s always on New Year’s Day, so it’s always a public holiday, offering enrants the rare pleasure of driving through Central London without let or hindrance, and straight into the royal park, London’s Maidan, the lungs of the city.

Hyde Park is a space I love. There aren’t too many things I miss about the UK that I can’t get in Switzerland, but this is one of them — or at least it contains, or represents, a range of them. I have flickering recollections of Hyde Park stretching back a long way. Most of these memories involve being in love with someone or other, and are pleasant and sunlit. By contrast, when I think of previous editions of this race, I see clumps of rueful runners cursing in clouds of freezing mist, trying to clap and stamp away the cold. Today, we were lucky. It was mild and clear.

Even without the usual excuse of needing to insulate myself by lingering in the car, I dithered too long and had to jog to the start, pursued by a keen sense of panic. But as always (or nearly always — the Fleet Half Marathon of 2002 comes to mind), I made it just in time to hear that mournful horn launch us on that mournful voyage to ignominy.

The race is two laps of a circuit that starts near the east end of the Serpentine and takes in the northern fringe of the park, alongside Bayswater Road, before heading south again, past the top end of the lake. The finish (and informal bag deposit area) used to be the bandstand, but I didn’t even see it today. Has it been swallowed up by that mini-funfair that’s appeared in recent years? The course might have changed slightly since I was here last, or perhaps I just missed it.

With both calfs strapped in, I casually fell in with the usual crowd of losers at the rear — the plump, the semi-lame, the slightly mad, the wrinklies, and the newly enthusiastic. As a member of all of these disreputable clubs, my place down among the dead men seemed particularly richly deserved, even if I say so myself. We panted onwards through the first kilometre, watching in a collective, uncommunicated despair as the gazelles in the vanguard vanished into the far distance.

By the second kilometre the pain in my right calf was increasing, and had begun to transmit a threatening throb towards my ankle. Between 2.5 and 3, I knew the game was up — and sure enough, there wasn’t long to wait. Just past the 3 km marker, the familiar small explosion of  pain appeared, the only difference being that it had always previously been the left calf, and today it was the right. Nice to have a little variety at least.

I pulled up, leaning on a bench to stretch the limb. I don’t know how helpful this is but it seemed like a better idea than weeping, which was the only option I could think of. I then walked for 2 minutes before beginning my 6.5 kilometres of limpy jogging. At each kilometre marker I stretched it again and walked for a minute or so. Approaching the final marker, and thoroughly fed up, I decided I had to try something radical, so I pulled off my shoes and plodded the last kilometre in my socks. This produced a few gasps from the spectators, and one or two from me as I traversed the more corrugated sections of the path. I’d like to be able to say that all calf pain vanished as I went shoeless, and I was suddenly able to hare through the field, pipping the complacent leader by a nose as he raised his arms in premature triumph. Er, but I can’t. The astonishing news is that this didn’t happen. But at least the pain was no worse.

It must have been a slow year, as I was genuinely surprised not to finish last. There is little glory to be found here though, and my heartless Garmin recorded the grim fact – it had taken me one and a quarter hours to manage a simple 10K.

My initial reaction was gloom and a sense of failure, but I didn’t allow it to last long. When I had these injury problems previously, I sought expert help from a variety of sources — sports therapist, two podiatrists, and one of the personal trainers at the gym. I’ve also had discussions with my knowledgeable RC friends. None of these people wrote me off, or told me to give up. Everyone has given good advice – much of it detailed, specific and credible. The only problem with all this advice is that I haven’t taken any of it, and we all know that observation, that “If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.” I’d naively ignored it.

So the over-riding feeling was one of self-approach rather than self-pity, and this soon gave way to a decision to remain positive and be determined to deal with the problem. At least I’ve already sought the solution, and been advised what to do, so there is none of the usual forlorn “WTF happened there?”

The proffered solutions didn’t come with guarantees, but they are credible, and at least there’s enough information to create a plan – and a plan that fits in well with decisions already made about getting fitter and shedding some useless middle-aged ballast.

In summary, the expert analysis I’d received during 2010 pointed to some fundamental issues with form and gait, a consequence of a having a weak core, floppy glutes, and reduced flexibility. These central fragilities were forcing my skeleton into making unnatural lower leg twisting movements when running — and particularly when tired. The outcome was excessive stress on the knees and calf muscles – and inevitable injury. Carrying surplus weight was only making it worse.

So regular exercises and stretches targeted at strengthening the core and glutes is what I must do, and what I will do. Losing weight is what I must do and what I will do. There is no option now, apart from finally, formally, abandoning the plodding life.

If I don’t make these changes, the injuries will continue to reappear. Foolishly, I’d taken the lazy option, hoping that an extended rest would sort it all out. And after several weeks of pain-free jogging, I had started to believe that my instincts were cleverer than the experts and their many collective decades of experience. And if I could only be happy with short fitness plods two or three times a week, I could have got away with this arrogance. But once the distances creep past 4 miles or so, their expertise is revealed.

The tragic conclusion is that sitting in an armchair for a year, consuming the greatest wines and cheeses known to humanity, was not the answer I had cheerfully imagined it to be.

Bollocks. But fun while it lasted.

Good intentions

Here we are again.

It’s usually with a sigh that I consider New Year resolutions, but this time around I feel strangely relieved. I need to break the downward Dolcelatte and Barolo spiral, and the appalling chaos and depravity it produces in a small community like, well, my apartment. The approach of 2012 is as good an impetus as I’ll get for a while.

So resolution number one is to avert my eyes as I pass the bulging Käse counters in Migros and the Coop. Cheese, as I’m sure someone must have opined, is a good servant but a bad master. To my shame, I’ve shown I can’t be trusted to handle the substance responsibly.

Alongside cheese on the naughty shelf goes its devious partner. The dark rumours were true. Et tu, vino? Just as cheese consumption is almost impossible without a glass of decent red wine, so a glass of decent red wine seems impossible without a lump of cheese to nibble at. And while this cycle of interdependency trundles on, leaving me having eaten and drunk far more of these ambrosial commodities than I deserve, or intended, someone has to take control. And I guess I’m the most conveniently placed bloke.

So I’m taking a break from wine for a while. How long? One month at a time. The end of January is that notorious boozefest, Almeria. Let’s wait and see…

Among several reasons for making this change is that I have no chance of getting back into running if I don’t. There have been a few false restarts, but the last few weeks have offered more genuine hope than I’ve had in two years that the show could be dragged back on the road. To help drive home that possibility I need to shed some serious blubber again. Apart from making running less painful, it will take some stress off the calf, which remains the biggest threat to doing some reasonable distances again.

To help this new campaign I’ve been back to the posh gym on the lake, and taken the plunge. It’s pricey, even by Swiss standards, but it’s by far the most salubrious gym (er, sorry, I mean “health club and fitness studio”) I’ve looked at here — and perhaps anywhere. The sort of place that provides towels and freshly squeezed fruit juice. I’d always regarded the cost as a barrier, but have realised that it can also be used in the opposite way — as an incentive. If I’m paying all this money (goes the argument) then I have to go regularly to get my money’s worth. And if it’s a pleasant place to be, I’m more likely to go. That’s resolution number three.

On the running front, things may become clearer tomorrow, New Year’s Day, when I’m planning to re-engage with the Hyde Park 10K. This was the last proper race I took part in, and finished, in 2010. It was also the race that first revealed the calf trouble that has hardly let go of me since. I need to see if I can fare any better this time around. I can state with certainty that I won’t get round any less slowly than last time. Last night I plodded just over five miles through the rainy residential streets of Crawley, taking the same time that I used to comfortably jog for 6 miles. So the target tomorrow is simply to do the distance, regardless of time. If I finish at all, I may well be last, but that doesn’t matter this time around. It’s extending the distance that’s important. After last night’s plod I was delighted that the previously troublesome left calf stayed silent. But annoyingly, a strong twinge did appear in the other one during the final mile, so my concern has now shifted rightwards.

Where is all this heading? What if I do get through tomorrow, and find myself capable of “doing some reasonable distances again”? Well, first up is the Almeria Half Marathon at the end of January. Flight and hotel are booked. The final detail is the race itself. Last time, I barely got to the second mile before the injury flared up, and I had to pull out. If I get to the finish line intact this time around, I’ll aim to push on for the Zurich Marathon on April 22. But it’s too early to say more than that at this stage. Tomorrow is the first big test.  Running isn’t a resolution; it’s the outcome if these three succeed.

The penultimate resolution is to write shorter blog posts. It’s time to return to the original format of brief updates, with longer entries reserved for races  and the death of the monarch. Too much creative energy, anxiety and time is expended here when I should be wasting these things on the fifth good intention.

A Happy New Year (again) to all friends — new and old, near and far. If I have pissed you off during 2011, as is likely, I am sorry. I will be much better behaved in 2012.

Ha ha!

The tinsel anniversary

Ugh. Post-nebbiolo cranial throb.

I lay in bed and considered the day ahead. The trailer didn’t promise much, so I arrived at a decision to do nothing more strenuous than a spot of keyboard tapping, and later, to spend some quality time with the TV remote. A modest blueprint indeed, but with the lake barely visible through a curtain of blustery rain, no less than such a day deserved.

The very possibility that by mid-evening I’d be grinning like a shark on payday, sipping Buck’s Fizz from a half pint glass, and reflecting on having run in my first race in two years, was a thought too insolent to dare present itself. But remarkably, it’s how this humdinger of a day ended.

Just before 2pm, still in Scene One, Take One, I took my coffee to the back bedroom, and switched on the spare PC. I rescued this machine just recently, from a family member who is a chronic alcoholic. She bought it six years ago, and had never managed to take it out of the box. Instead it became a bedside table on which to accommodate her rattling good collection of empty vodka bottles. When I learned of its existence, I offered to swap it for a proper table. We were both happy with the result.

I wanted this old, unused Dell because it was exactly that — old and unused. I liked the idea of it having no internal history. It would be my fabled tabula rasa. More to the point, it had no modem or WiFi capability. Just what I was looking for in a dedicated NaNoWriMo machine.

Remember NaNoWriMo? Ah yes. Well, I failed. I hit just over 84% of my 50,000 word target. Publishing the previous entry might have been a mistake, as it provoked a response from an angry Australian man, saying I should be writing something else. I was scared enough to believe him. I don’t yet know how sensible this was, as it may have pushed me back into the pit from which NaNoWriMo was trying to rescue me.

Or has it? It’s true that the frantic NaNo productivity has gone, but the running book project thing and I have started talking again, and a reconciliation is on the cards. The new task remains an over-edited crawl, but at least I’ve found the impetus to reconsider it from the ground up. The result of this painful rumination is a word massacre. I’d been sheltering somewhere near 35,000 of the stubborn bastards in that old immovable bunker before the Aussie daisy cutter dropped. Boom! And then there were 15,000.

That may not sound like an advance, but it is. These 15,000 are newer, faster, cleaner, meaner, and… just better all round. More important, they now come attached to a plan of sorts. All it requires now is a steady beavering away.

It was with a spot of beavering away in mind that I turned on the new old PC. Waiting for it to wake up, I glanced through the window at the rain bouncing off the spangly new black tarmac. Very Sunday afternoon. This empty road was closed nine months ago to let a new roundabout take shape around the corner. There’s a lot to be said for noiselessness, but here on my own, I’ve actually started to miss the drone of the traffic. The view at the front of the apartment, down the hill, is uplifting, but the altitude detaches us. Factor in the silent neighbours and the closed road at the rear, and it’s been like living in a lighthouse. In the New Year, the road will reopen. A day or two after that, I will be longing for a return to this silence.

I peer at the screen and start to type.

Chapter 11: The Moons of Running
A fad mentality means I don’t stick at new pastimes for long. A swarm of shadfly ideas is permanently buzzing around my head. One will occasionally bite and turn into a raging enthusiasm, before dying a day or two later. I’ve never learnt to expect disappointment when the next life-changing scheme visits me. This is always going to be the one. But the beautiful new relationship turns out to be another fucking one night stand after all. The next morning, I wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Hm. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “fucking” there. Does it alienate nice people? Or does it invite approval from the street smart? Gratuitously offensive, or providing edgy appeal? I go through this same internal exchange of memos every time. Every fucking time. More coffee may provide the answer. As the kettle boils, I reach the usual conclusion that it doesn’t matter because it will never exist and will never be read.

An hour later I return to the machine. Again, I glance through the window. Yep, the rain is still bouncing off the spangly new black tarmac.

If impulsiveness causes me problems, it must be torture for those around me. I once went into a pub in Huddersfield for a quick sandwich, and emerged 20 minutes later as the owner of a car I’d never seen, bought from a man I’d never met before, using money I didn’t have. Another time, deciding I was fed up renting property, I resolved to buy a flat. Less than 18 hours later, an offer was accepted on the first place I viewed. I lived in that fucking flat for nine years, and not a single day passed without me wishing I’d been a bit more patient.

Pause.

What now? My coffee cup is still full, so no procrastination available there.

Ah, yes, I know. I should  look up the first ever entry of this blog. It might, y’know, inspire me.

So.

Page one. Tuesday 11 December 2001.

Oh.

And today is? 11 December 2011.

Gah! I’d occasionally pondered how I might mark the tenth anniversary of this website — not that I’m precious enough to think it matters much. But it was academic now. At the very least, I supposed I should write a blog post.

Something else pained me. I recalled the message I posted on Twitter earlier in the day: Zurich Silvesterlauf is today – 8 km run through the city. Should have been there. Instead, another day of strenuous idleness beckons #ohwell

====================================

So.

I blew it.

Running Commentary is ten years old today.

Today is also the day of Silvesterlauf in Zurich, an occasion when up to 20,000 people meet in the city centre to run 8 kilometres together, in a raucous celebration of running. I should have been there. It was all too perfect an opportunity to mark the occasion. But I blew it.

The date was in my diary all year, but by the time I noticed it, entries had closed. At the time, the disappointment barely registered. Just one of those things. Until today, when I idly reviewed my first ever post, and noticed the date of it: 11 December 2001, and its significance.

As a man who likes to luxuriate in… resonance… who is inspired by… significance, I am crushed by my stupidity, my laziness, my lack of planning. The Silvesterlauf should have been the celebration of what has passed, and the springboard for what is to come.

[Pause]

But wait. Perhaps it still could be….

Gulp. Just been to the race website, and noticed that the ‘fun runners’ (code for old, fat people like me) have races scheduled for 17:30 and 18:30. It is now…. 15:15.

[Pause]

Bollocks. I’m gonna do it. I’ve never run as a “bandit” in a race before, but this one deserves it. No idea how far I’ll get. One 4km circuit would do me just fine at the moment, in my feeble, unprepared state.

Hurrah! Update later. I have a race to run…

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As always, it took me longer than it should have done to get ready for a race. As always? How cheeringly present tense.

On November 19, just three or four weekends ago, when the redoubtable @sweder, @MLCMan, @splodmeister were about to train their integral heavy duty beer barrels 13 miles up a Tasmanian mountain, and the scarcely less magnificent Tom Roper was heading off to the loveable Brighton 10K, I felt somewhat pissed off. More than pissed off. Pride and envy and bitterness all came knocking. And relief. All that mixed-up stuff. Reading the extraordinary accounts of the day in Tasmania (see the forum), as well as Tom’s posterior reflections on the Brighton 10k, brought out these chaotic feelings. I wondered if this was something I would ever sample again.

I’ve run 60 or so races, and there isn’t a single one whose first mile I ran feeling pleased to be where I actually was. But there isn’t a single one whose final mile I ran wanting to be anywhere else.

So I am running around the apartment in my version of Supermarket Sweep, collecting stuff. Being impromptu, and being a race, made it more complicated. With no official entry, there would no bag drop facility available at race HQ in central Zurich. And being Switzerland, of course there would be no parking available anywhere near, so the usual option  of using the car as changing room and gear storage could be crossed off. The challenge then was to  travel into the city in the clothes I’d be running in, but they also had to be warm enough to resist the post-race chill.

The first item I reach for is my canary-yellow Hal Higdon cap. This old friend has accompanied me on many a long lonesome journey. Boston, Hamburg, Tokyo, Almeria, Copenhagen… through Cuban sun and Yorkshire sleet, with a stop at every weather station in between. The cap is followed by the ever-natty Running Commentary teeshirt, lycra undershorts with long baggy leggings, and cheapie Aldi running jacket.  This outfit would keep my modesty intact while providing enough pockets for the usual gubbins —  two keys, cash and bank card, glasses case, iPod and headphones, coins for the meter, phone, pen and paper…

And then there was nutrition to consider. I’d consumed nothing but coffee and Ibuprofen since last night’s Pizza Inferno and Barolo. As I headed for the station, I pushed a mushy banana into my face. Arriving at Zurich Hauptbahnhof with a good half hour to spare, I completed this carefully planned pre-race nutritional regime with a sticky cereal bar and half a litre of lemon tea.

Within a minute I was on the number 13 tram heading for Fraumunster.

I jumped off halfway down Bahnhofstrasse, which the guidebooks will tell you is “Zurich’s world-renowned premier shopping street” — except that no one outside the city has ever heard of it. But it does scrub up well, particularly in the approach to Christmas, when tiny golden lights cascade from the sky in a gaudy snowstorm of opulence. Very Zurich. Very Swiss.

I’d half expected the street to be cordoned off, and closed to trams. How else could the race be run? All quickly became clear. The organisers had erected barriers and fencing to create a course along one of the pavements, before it snaked away through the cobbled side streets leading into Niederdorf, the old quarter of Zurich. It was an odd juxtaposition, and created that sort of parallel existence thing I like to marvel at. To see these runners pounding along these channels like caged prisoners, as if trying to escape into the consumerist world of Bahnhofstrasse, was a rich source of metaphor protein. I feasted greedily.

“The race” is not a single race at all, but a series that runs throughout the afternoon and early evening. The running day starts at noon with 8 year olds + mums scurrying for 1.4 kms, continues through the “invitation only” elite 8.8 km contests, to the mass-participation races later on. The programme is sliced and diced into a matrix of expected finish times and age. The one I was aiming to join was the 8.8 km in-under-55-minutes. Without a number or a chip, I didn’t care where I joined or how long I ran for. (Klicken Sie hier for a professional glimpse of the event, along with some nice views of the city. Recommended.)

Finding the start took much longer than expected. I had a rough idea where it was all kicking off, but the closing off of many of the usual smaller thoroughfares around the river and the cathedrals, prevented me taking the obvious route. In the end, I made it to the other side of the Limmat, located a gap in the fence, and stared down the empty riverside road, waiting for the charge to come my way. Watching with me, high above the opposite bank, the illuminated tower of Fraumunster.

Then suddenly… I think… yes, some darting lights along the road in the distance, and here they come, this great tsunami of shrieking, breathless humanity. Like a kid shivering nervously at the edge of the icy water, there is only one way in. I need to time it right. The speedy leaders pass before the bigger rump appears. “Bigger rump” sounds more appropriate somehow, so this has to be my moment. To the bemusement of the politely clapping elderly couple I’d been standing alongside, I’m through the fence and in, being swept forward by this most invigorating of  tidal waves, across the bridge and into the cobble-stoned heart of the old town. Here the festive lanes are thickly fringed with cheerful spectators, some ringing, some bellowing, some klaxoning their encouragement. Most are armed with nothing more than grins of seasonal benevolence.

Before long I’m overheating. The cap comes off. I can feel the sweat on my neck. I need cool air on my chest, so I start tugging at the zip. The damn thing is stuck. Bloody cheapie Aldi running jacket. I have to wrench it open, nearly sending an elbow into the face of one of the many Santas plodding along beside me. At this moment, we pass behind the famous singing Christmas tree as its innocent inhabitants warble their messages of peace and goodwill to all. It’s enough to assuage the growling Santa beside me, who seems to be shouting and pointing and grinning all at the same time. He shrugs, and moves off to sprinkle his unusual brand of festive cheer elsewhere.

Twice I hear the kids sweetly chirruping out of their tree, and decide that’ll do me. I’m done. Two circuits and 5.3 kilometres is enough to put the check in the box. Without a number or a chip, and without having paid my 38 Swissies, I’m gatecrashing someone else’s party. Now I have to gatecrash out of the party — which isn’t easy, given the fences. But I spot a gap in the Market, and hop out there. Before heading off back to the station, I linger for a few minutes on Zurich’s world-renowned premier shopping street, watching the field struggle on towards the finish, thinking  how heartening it is to see all this again, and to feel a part of it. It’s been too long.

I’ve avoided posting much about running recently, and for good reason. Every time I open my mouth about possible plans, some event has stepped out of shadows to trip me up. I tried a bit of reverse psychology, telling myself, then an indifferent blogosphere, that the running struggle had abandoned me for good. This seemed to work in the way I secretly hoped it would, because almost immediately I felt the need to get out there. Invisibly, I did. Then another long gap until a month or so ago, when I knew a big decision was approaching. And so far, not bad. For the record, and at the risk of summoning the voodoo, over the past 19 days I’ve managed  9 lumbering lakeside plods, mostly three to four miles. Each has been ugly, a sweaty tussle with the horned bon vivant who loves to embrace me. Best news is that there hasn’t been a peep from the troublesome calf. Jinx, do your worst.

The calf remains a threat, but there are other hazards. Here’s a bizarre confession: it’s only in the past year that I’ve realised I’m not actually young any more. Seriously, it came as a shock to find I’m suddenly older than most people. How did that happen? It never used to be like this, so I guess it’s been magnified by the move. Switzerland likes structure and classification. The dividing lines between generations seem to be bolder than I was used to in the UK. For instance, most people, even expats, seem to socialise within their own age groups, and so I’ve had to become much more aware of my position — or what others consider my position should be. I don’ t like it much. It’s hard to stop these toxins dripping into the old self-esteem reservoir.

Adding another dimension of struggle to the physical impediments doesn’t help my chances of  getting back into regular running. It’s already harder to lose weight; harder to feel fit and to stay feeling fit; harder to avoid injury. Now we have growing self-doubt. Another enemy to fight. Do I have the capability? I’ve not seen much evidence of it in the recent past, but perhaps it’s not gone forever. It could be hiding just behind the wine rack…. if only I could just squeeze past it to take a look, without getting waylaid by its temptations.

So I’m halfway back to Hauptbahnhof, when I realise something is missing. Gulp. My Hal Higdon cap. Nooo! I think about turning back, but there’s no point. It could be anywhere. My dependable old companion was gone.

Later on, I thought about this. I was last aware of the cap when I stuffed it into my jacket pocket, just before the zip got stuck. And I remembered “the growling Santa beside me, who seems to be shouting and pointing and grinning all at the same time.”  I think I did him a disservice. He wasn’t complaining about me, he was trying to tell me (in breathless mid-race German) that I’d dropped my cap.  Sorry, mein Freund.

About 40 minutes later, I was home, and doing something I almost never do: drinking Champagne on my own. I’ve no qualms about sharing a bottle of wine with no one other than myself, but Champagne belongs in a different category. I’d had a bottle of Canard-Duchêne in the fridge for as long as I can remember. It was even  in my fridge in Reading for at least a year, waiting for a good moment. Here, back from the race, out of the shower, needing reward, I opened my fridge to find a beer, and spotted the Champagne. The rest is fizztory. One of those unscheduled  ”bugger it” moments appeared, and moments later, my self restraint had gone pop.

Like (it is said) the English at large, I enjoy Champagne that has aged. It becomes a deeper yellow, loses the aggressive edge from the fizz, and seems to find extra flavours from somewhere. But I think this one might have been better a year ago, so I did what I do even more rarely, and adulterated it with orange juice. Mmm, much better. And the juice even made it sort of healthy. By the second glass, I was beaming for England, and feeling insufferably smug. Man, I’ve missed all this.

As good as the event was, it was a shocking reminder of how unfit I am. My 5 kilometres were laboured and difficult. Every loud slap of rubber on cobblestone sent a distress call up through my wobbly torso to a discombobulated brain, still sheltering from the effects of too much wine and too little sleep. By some way, this was the least prepared I’ve ever been for a race, and the worst performance ever. But did I care?

On today of all days, being there was what counted. I’ve spent a decade trying to avoid clichés so it’s with extra relish that I serve this  one up. And anyway, perhaps nothing better sums up this plodding life, and the ten years of RunningCommentary: that it really is the taking part that matters.

On that note, let me wish all friends past, present and future, an excellent Christmas and New Year, and a strenuous and rewarding 2012. May our ambitions be great and achievable, and may those swarms of shadfly ideas never cease to bother us.

 

Losing the plot

That title might sound like a reflection on my previous post, but no — it’s a pun-charged reference to NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

The idea is to produce at least 50,000 words of fiction during the 30 days of November. I’ll save you the trouble of opening a spreadsheet to do the calculation: that’s an average of 1667 words a day. (Warning: more statistics on the way. Try to contain your excitement.)

I first came across Nano, as its lonely practitioners, known as Wrimos, like to call it, in October last year. I briefly considered giving it a go then, but on November 1st I found myself sitting not in front of a keyboard with a Do not disturb sign on the door but in front of a steering wheel on the 700 mile drive from Theale to Zurich. And Day 2 saw me starting a new job, so it was never likely to happen. I didn’t think it likely to happen this year either. NaNo seemed like an ideal candidate for inclusion on a list of those things that seem worthy enough, but that you know will never get done. Like climbing the Munros, or walking the Pennine Way, or doing the ironing.

But I’ve surprised myself, and managed to knock something out every day so far. Yesterday, on the 12th day of the month, I sailed past the 25K halfway point. Current tally is 27,676 words, which is 6005 words ahead of schedule. Or 55.4% done, with just 43.3% of the month gone. Average daily output is 2129 words. At the current rate, I would reach 50,000 after 23.5 days, nearly a week ahead of schedule. Most productive day was yesterday, with 4102 words. Least was last Monday, with 526.  I’ve spent a total of 30.46 hours writing it, or an average of 140.6 minutes per day. Cumulative hourly word rate is 902 words, though interestingly, this rate has been steadily rising over the 37 individual sessions, as can be seen:

 

And that illustrates what you suspected all along: only those with bulging anorak wardrobes should mess with NaNoWriMo.

People I tell are surprisingly polite about this activity. Most feign mild interest, and some even go as far as to ask a question, which tends to be: “Who judges it?” I then explain it’s not a competition, and conversation quickly shifts to something more interesting, like the latest addition to their collection of barcodes. Despite it not being a competition, WriMo vernacular does refer to “winning”, which simply means reaching the 50,000 word target.

There aren’t many rules. None of the output can have been created before November 1st, though it’s permissible to plan characters and outline plots. And no editing before November 30. That’s about it. NaNoWriMo is shamelessly about quantity, not quality. This initially struck me as a cop out. What’s to stop someone asdfghjkl-ing 50,000 times and declaring William Burroughs to be a seminal influence? The answer is nothing, but if no one is judging or even reading your work, what would be the point?

The quantity rule does have a plausible purpose. The idea is to exterminate two of the cardinal sins of writers and would-be writers, namely the tendency to procrastinate, and to over-edit instead of pushing on.

Guilty m’Lud.

What happened to the running book? Oh it’s still there. I came across the oppressive 30,000 word slab just yesterday, while trying to talk down my computer from its annual suicide attempt. I spent much of the afternoon behaving like a man desperately trying to scoop water out of a sinking boat with his bare hands, except that the enemy wasn’t seawater but a seemingly cocaine-fuelled platoon of viral commandos, hell bent on knocking out my vital Windows files. As an oblivious world kept turning, I gave up and concentrated on trying to salvage deserving data. And there it was: the folder entitled RunningBook, containing subfolders stretching back to an incriminating 2004. Watching it sink into the digital abyss might have done us all a favour. Instead I rescued it, but with the same enthusiasm I might feel hauling Piers Morgan out of quicksand.

The reason it’s struggled to grow beyond that size can be linked to the aforementioned shortcomings:

• The reluctance to “get ass in chair” as the excellent memoirist Susan Gilman warned us about at the writers’ workshop thing I attended in Zurich in the spring, and
• The tendency, even after getting “ass in chair” to begin by compulsively rereading a chunk of what I wrote previously, and spending hours refashioning it into something equally dismal.

These are universal traits in frustrated writers, and pretty much all that separates the wannabes from the average published writer. Yes, much more separates wannabe writers AND the average published writer from good published writers but let’s put that on one side. Actually writing well is a more distant obstacle I don’t even want to think about. The first task is just plastering some of that word… shit… stuff… whatever you call it… on the page. The rumoured requirement to produce devastating insight and an ambrosial turn of phrase is an enemy to square up to some other time.

Which is where NaNoWriMo comes in. It’s a deadline. It cracks the whip and urges you ever onwards. No time to squander on the endlessly iterating loop of edit and re-edit. What’s to stop one doing this without NaNoWriMo? Well nothing — except the seemingly irresistible urge to throw oneself into those familiar man-traps. The mixture of peer pressure and encouragement, along with the collective creative body warmth emanating from the many thousands of Wrimos across the globe embarking on the same voyage, helps you to scoff at the bad old habits, just as running in a race will always produce a faster, more dogged performance than doing the same distance on your own. The hope is that those ‘bad old habits’ will be well and truly spooked. So far, so good.

So good? Hmm. Well, I’m pleased with the word count, and I’ve surprised myself with how easy I’ve found writing dialogue, but the plot is sliding a bit, or rather, hurtling downhill like a drunk on a toboggan. And I couldn’t begin trying to list the overarching themes without tugging nervously at my earlobe and refusing to make eye contact.

I did try the detailed planning approach, but failed. Outlining plot and sub-plots, characters, timeline, themes. No good. Nothing came of it. So on 1st of November (a public holiday, conveniently), I sat at an old computer I’d set up in the spare bedroom, and thought: “What now?” I had no plan. I had nothing but an opening line which I now typed and stared at for a while. Eventually another appeared. Then another.

And that’s all there is to it.

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Added 16 November:

A robust exchange of emails with an Australian man has made me think again.  The robustness was mainly on his part. I was too scared to disobey.

I’m sticking with the NaNoWriMo framework, but in some unexplained deus ex machina, the rambling novel has become some sort of bizarre running book. A true story, they say.

The past is a foreign country

One year ago today, we arrived in Zurich with a carload of Branston Pickle. One year ago tomorrow, I started work.

In an unintentional recreation of this momentous journey, I recently drove back to England for a few days. On the return ferry crossing, I did something unusual, and coughed up the extra £15 to travel first class from Dover to Dunkirk. I don’t know what impulse made me check that box on the form, but I’m glad I did. Paying a bit more gives you the use of a private lounge with free coffee, juice and biscuits. Naturally, you aim to consume at least fifteen quids worth of Custard Creams to ensure the investment isn’t wasted, before sinking into the extra comfy seats for a couple of contemplative hours. The lounge has enormous, circular windows, through which one may ponder the meaning of life. And specifically, one’s own.

Watching the white cliffs recede, as I seemed to do for a long time, gave me no choice but to dwell on what I was abandoning, and what I was heading towards. The most important thing I’m leaving behind is my wife, who still has loose ends to tie up before joining me. That’s the sad bit. Most of the rest is pretty joyful.

My attitude towards the UK now resembles what I’ve felt about my home town, London, for many years. I’m grateful to my parents for having the foresight and decency to ensure I was born and raised in such a tremendous city. I walk around London with that indefinable sense that tells you: “This is home”. Which is ironic, as I just don’t want to live there anymore, and haven’t wanted to for a long time. I don’t want the unturnoffable noise, and the claustrophobia endemic to every big city — even though that sense of chaos is the very thing that thrills and energises me when I’m there. But you have to get the dosage right, and a couple of teaspoonfuls after breakfast is all I can manage these days. That London feeling has now infected the whole country.

I chuckle appreciatively whenever I hear that famous Cecil Rhodes remark that “To be born an Englishman is to have won first prize in the lottery of life”. It sums up the attitude that is so despised by our lesser cousins in the colonies and elsewhere. And yet it isn’t the nation it was in the Rhodes era. Empires and kids up chimneys are no longer fashionable. We can all celebrate the advances that have liberated the masses, taking them out of the Coketown mills and laying them gently on ten million DFS sofas in front of ten million plasma TVs, where they are free to snore gently for most of their lengthening, work-free lives. And as that snooty sentence illustrates, we have also seen pride in the old place drain away.

There are many great things about England. I was reminded of this on the Saturday night, when we drove down to Lewes to celebrate the half centuries of the great Sweder and Seafront Plodder – or Ash and Andy as they are known out of RC uniform. We were able to feast on all the things I miss about Blighty: real food, real beer, real music, real language, and real mates. And all in a real English town. Lewes is weird: a fact not just accepted, but positively celebrated by the town’s curious residents. Let’s not encourage them by listing its eccentricities.

It’s on nights like this that the holes in my reinvention are exposed. Just like the night I spent in the great Nag’s Head in Reading a few days earlier, immersed in the comforting harmonies that only a beer-charged, ribald choir of English pub chortling can produce. It isn’t just that uniquely jovial sound, but the temporary fog of wisdom and humour that goes with it. I miss it, and at times like those, I falter. But then I wake up, and see things as they really are.

So just 12 hours after draining my final juicy pint of Harvey’s in Lewes, I’m embracing my wife and setting off for Dover — and actually feeling quite relieved to be doing so.

Just as telling as my indifference for most of what Britain has become, was the sense of excitement I had when seeing the first sign for Basel, towards the end of the 700 mile drive. It felt like a homecoming.

Given its tiny size and population (7.5m), Switzerland seems to have a disproportionate influence on most things. It punches above its weight, which is probably why it divides people – both inside and out. Some Brits splutter with indignation when I say I live here, while others seem envious, presuming it must be some sort of Sound of Music theme park: all yodelling and fondue; mountain hiking in the clean air; swimming in glassy lakes, and trains that run on time.

And it has to be said that actually, it is quite a lot like that. But oh, those bloody trains that run on time. For some, they also seem to symbolise the bad. Critics think that too much efficiency must be a bad thing; that a bit of chaos is good for the creative soul. For them, the country is money-obsessed, utilitarian and boring.

This divide exists among ex-pats inside the country too. Some love to whine about the shops being shut on Sunday, and the alleged tendency for neighbours to report you to the police for having the wrong sort of flowers on the balcony. Most of these stories are apocryphal – like it being illegal to flush the loo after 10pm. But it can’t be denied that the Swiss like their rules, and more to the point, like to obey them. Pedestrians will rarely cross the road until the green man says it’s OK, even if there is no traffic about. When I joked to a Swiss neighbour about this tendency, his deadpan reply made me think — and still makes me think:

“But if we cross the road on red, our children will grow up thinking it’s OK to break the rules”.

And that’s the big difference between the two countries. The Swiss are more obedient than the Brits. As a result, their lives tend to be safer, more orderly, more predictable, and OK, perhaps, more dull.

I’ve decided I like a bit of order, possibly because my life hasn’t had too much of it in the past. Perhaps there’s something to be said for the sensation of jackboot on windpipe. Yes, even my own. My politics have certainly shifted rightwards over the past few years, as is the apparent tendency in most people as they age, but I reckon that my year in Die Schweiz has given that natural impulse a nudge.

It’s a quirky nation, which is the key to being happy here. After my first few weeks, when I briefly felt slightly disorientated by my life’s new landscape, it suddenly struck me that Switzerland is a very funny place. As long as you remember that, and learn to appreciate the humour in some of the absurdities, you’ll be fine. Sometimes it’s better to chuckle. When I was pulled over by the police recently for falling foul of an invisible speed trap, my uniformed oppressor relieved me of 40 CHF and gave me a brief lecture in excellent English. I told him this was the first time I’d been stopped by the police in Switzerland. “Congratulations,” he said, “this is a very big day for you.” Then we guffawed, shook hands, and I went on my way.

It’s a grand country, and an extremely proud one. The Swiss work hard, and work effectively. Stuff gets done. There is no obvious culture among the Swiss of welfare dependency, even though unemployment benefit (being paid almost all your previous salary for up to two years) is surprisingly good. It’s just not what people are like. If they want something, they arrange for it to happen. How different from Britain where, somewhere along the line, the welfare system ceased to be just an admirable safety net and became, for many, a pretty comfy armchair from which to mock and disparage the system that feeds them.

Damn it, let’s have a rant.

It’s good that kids are no longer shoved up British chimneys; it’s good that we have more leisure time and live longer, healthier lives. Our system of democracy is far from perfect, but it’s less bad than most others. It’s good that most of us enjoy greater civil liberties than we did 150 years ago. Even 50 years ago. But too much cake can be a bad thing. Provision of welfare may be the mark of a civilised society, but I despair at the British left’s refusal to face up to the possibility that it might not be the untouchable panacea, and that too much dependence on the state can point to tectonic shifts in a nation’s social, moral, and economic topography. Their solution for dealing with the cracks in the walls is to jump up and down a bit harder. They won’t be truly happy till we’re all up to our necks in rubble. But by then, there will be no one left to rescue us.

“I would like to have a job but what’s the point? I would lose all my benefits. I prefer to stay at home and watch my kids grow up”. This is a near direct quote from a TV programme I watched on the BBC last week. Middle-aged guy, proudly nodding towards his teenage children, dressed in their new looking replica football shirts. I’ve no problem with people making the decision not to work, if they can afford to do it. It’s when they expect other people to pay for it that I get pissed off.

It’s a good thing that the state can ensure its people don’t starve, and have a roof over their heads. But once the provision of these services moves from being a last resort to being some sort of inalienable ‘human right’, we are in trouble. Not because it’s bad to be helpful. It’s good to be helpful. But there is a bigger picture that welfare proponents are unwilling to acknowledge, let alone discuss, let alone agree to do something about. It’s clear that aspiration, self-sufficiency and motivation dribble away. The provision of a good thing: assistance, becomes provision of a bad thing: a corrosive over-reliance on the money and efforts of other people. For these self-styled victims, it seems nothing is possible unless the state provides it. How many times have we heard people complain angrily that the government isn’t providing them with jobs? People are outraged, furious, that they are not being presented with a personalised menu of occupations to help them while away the time until they can claim their pensions. So it’s “Just gimme the money, and stop asking inconvenient questions”.

One of the first things I learnt after moving to Switzerland is that the state wants to know who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m living. Everyone, Swiss and immigrant, has to register their presence at the local Gemeinde. Within 14 days of moving, you must make yourself known to the authorities, or you are in trouble. So you visit the local office with your completed form and two unsmiling photographs. They ask you questions, charge you about £60, and off you go. A few days later, all being well, you get your ID card through the mail. You are now on their books. This information is used to ensure you pay all the right taxes and insurance. Your car registration, health insurance details, employer, even your annual halbtax public transport registration all end up on the database.

When the last UK government proposed introducing ID cards, you’d have thought they were ordering us to sacrifice our firstborn, such was the reaction. There would have been riots in the streets (there are about most other things) if they’d gone ahead. We want the state to provide us with everything — housing, education, jobs, training, defence, health care — but feel affronted when the bastards ask us to do something in return.

I guess I must rather like the big brother approach. It’s strange that it makes me feel safer, while opponents presume it will make their lives hell. Maybe I’m more innocent, even gullible, than most, and maybe this is why I feel comfortable here. Paradoxical perhaps, but I find this contract with the state to be liberating and grown up. I feel trusted, so I trust. I feel respected, so I respect. I feel secure, so I do not steal. A few weeks ago, when the weather was warmer, I walked past an open-top sports car parked outside a restaurant. On the back seat, two seconds away from an easy theft, was a brand new, boxed, 42 inch TV. Probably  a good £800 or $1200 worth. Its owner was presumably in the restaurant, enjoying lunch, with no fear that his new TV wouldn’t still be there when he reappeared, an hour or two later. How long would it have lasted in the average UK street?

Life isn’t perfect here. It isn’t perfect anywhere. Sometimes that bureaucracy and paper-driven efficiency can be wearing. But it seems like a small price to pay. I like Switzerland, and I hope I can stay here. I like my job, and I like the friends I’ve made at work. I like my leisure time.

Why would I want to return to the UK?

Um.

Apart from the fruity aftertaste of that pint of Harvey’s — and of my wife — I can think of no compelling answer to that question. And I’ve had a long time to think of one. As the global  economy deteriorates further by the day, so I feel more sure that I’m better off out of it.

I feel safe here.

I’ve only to glance through the window of the apartment, at the lovely view over  Lake Zurich, to douse any doubts. Over there, the city’s medieval cathedralscape.  In the other direction, south-east, we have the mountains, now beginning to whiten, barometer-like, into a distant warning of winter.

Champagne for one

Vicious cycle

My arse collapsed, finally, as I creaked past Feldbach station. “No more”, it implored. “No more, you bastard.”

And so the plan to cycle the 69 circumferential kilometres of Lake Zurich fizzled out, like a fag end tossed into a puddle, precisely two thirds of the way through.

Forty-six of these clicking, biting blighters had drilled their way into my lower legs and wriggled upwards, filling my underpants. But I couldn’t squeeze kilometre 47 in anywhere.

Until 15 minutes before setting off, I had no idea I’d be spending last Sunday afternoon chasing this doomed errand. It was while wading through the furthest recesses of a neglected wardrobe that I came across a carrier bag containing my bicycle pump and helmet. At last. I’d been seeking these items for months. Had any pre-discovery plans existed, they would have ceased at that moment. Within a few minutes I was in the basement, pummelling air into the tyres of the trusty, rusty Trek hybrid. Ten minutes later, painted with sunblock and reloaded with iced tea, malt loaf and hard boiled eggs, I was coasting down the hill to the lake.

The weather forecast was promising a damp afternoon, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sun was on full beam.

There isn’t much more to tell. I rotated my feet for a while, eventually reaching Burkiplatz, the southern tip of Zurich city abutting the lake. It’s here that the lake steamers come and go, loading and unloading their cargoes of excitable tourists. I sat awhile, alongside that clock made of cacti, watching the squealing crowds. Then I recoated myself in sunblock, and relaunched.

This was about 16 kilometres in, and my backside was already showing its tender side. Soon it was becoming hard to sit on the saddle at all. I stopped again, this time to distribute items from my rucksack round the bike – camera, pump, toolkit – in the hope that this would take some pressure off my throbbing buttocks.

It seemed to work for a while, but by the time I’d reached Meilen, another 15 km or so down the line, directly across the lake from Horgen, I was seriously considering yielding to the screaming arse. But I continued, hoping the psychological ointment of being past halfway would push its analgesic magic further down my quivering torso.

Alas, no. I ground out another grim 10 kilometres or so, but that was that. The medieval outline of Rapperswil, the fourth base on this circuit, was clearly visible against the start of the Alps at the far end of the lake — but I couldn’t quite make it.  A shame, as my legs and cardio-vascular infrastructure seemed in good enough shape to make it round. All I need is a more leathery backside. When I was at school we used to toughen our conkers by dunking them in vinegar and sticking them in the oven for half an hour. Hmm.  I wonder…

But for now, I was left to creep into Feldbach station, with this tale between my legs.

Man and machine were hauled onto the next train back to Meilen, and from there, onto the ferry for the final leg across the lake, towards home. Despite seeing the Meilen ferry gliding across the lake every time I glance up from this desk, I’d not actually been on it since we moved here. Up on the viewing deck, scanning the hill above Horgen, trying to locate our apartment, was unsettling. I was no longer the microbiologist peering through the lens, but the amoeba, wriggling on the petri dish. Crikey.

Back home, I quickly repaired myself. The judicious application of Vaseline to some areas, and beer to others, did the job nicely.

The round-the-lake trip remains a very do-able target over the next few weeks.

Sticks and stones: an afternoon on Uetliberg, and a world first

There are, naturally, thousands of ‘wanderweg’ trails in this country, all carefully waymarked and classified. These include seven national trails, criss-crossing the nation, four dozen regional routes and 140+ local ones. But that’s only part of it. All of these are broken down into smaller paths or creatively joined up with lesser local trails to form an intricate network of new routes. The entire nation — countryside, and city — is dotted with the distinctive yellow wanderweg signs, pointing you to a selection of destinations, each with an estimated walking time, rather than a distance.

Where to start? Crossing off a few local routes first, before venturing into the more serious stuff, seems like a good idea. And so, on Saturday, I earmarked Uetliberg, Zurich’s modest local mountain. It’s just under 1000 metres high, so not too formidable.

Despite that, I can confidently state that I set a new world record on the day.

My early start failed to materialise. Before leaving the flat I had to contend with dishwasher issues. Excessive gunk and uncleaned plates led to an unscheduled bit of appliance maintenance, as well as the discovery that I’d finally exhausted the stock of dishwasher tablets we’d brought with us from the UK. Unremarkable in itself, but the news came within an hour of two equally devastating revelations. I’d earlier realised that I’d just exhausted my UK mouthwash supply. Not only that, but I was clean out of the special rubbish bags you have to buy for about £1 a go to finance the waste collection service. Buying a big roll of them was one of the first assignments we had to tackle on the day we arrived here. So in the space of one wretched hour, these three pillars of my domestic life were heartlessly removed, like a blind man having his stick booted away by a chortling thug.

It was a relief to pull on my brand new walking shoes (Lowa Renegades, if you must know), acquired just 18 hours earlier. Satisfyingly big and clumpy and robust, I sat back and smiled as they conveyed me down through the town, towards the train station, on a carpet of warm air. With some time to waste, I called into the local supermarket and spent 10 dreamy minutes in the cleaning products aisle.

Arriving at Zurich Hauptbahnhof , I made my way down to the tram stop on Bahnhofstrasse. With 6 minutes to kill, I made the fatal error of casual window shopping. In Zurich, you are never more than 50 metres from an outdoor shop of some kind. PAnd so, peering into Ochsner Sports, my eye was drawn towards the Nordic Walking poles on display…

My first lesson in Nordic Walking was how to convey ones stöcke on a tram. After sending first myself, then an old man mysteriously carrying a drum, crashing to the ground, I admit that I failed the test.

Apart from the slapstick, which at least kept a number of schoolkids happy, this was a significant tram ride. Despite being here nearly eight months, I’ve not yet tracked down where we stayed when we were here in 2006 for the marathon. I could find out easily enough by searching back through my emails, but I’ve consciously not done that. Someday, I will stumble across it, I thought. And on Saturday, shortly after stumbling across my new Nordic walking poles, I stumbled across the neighbourhood we’d previously stayed in – down towards the end of the number 13 tram route. Passing under a bridge, I suddenly had a prod of déjà vu. Round a corner, and there was the sportshalle, where I registered! I missed the hotel, so that remains a small mystery, but one I can solve next time I’m down this way.

Another burst of recognition came when we reached my destination – the end of the line. Here was the place I ended up on marathon day, after the race, when I got on the right tram, but going in the wrong direction. Having just plodded 26 miles through icy, incessant rain, I didn’t care. I would take it to the end of the route and wait for it to return. And this was the rather desolate place I waited, exhausted but happy, for 10 minutes or so, 5 years ago. There was surely something symbolic about finding myself:

• at the end of the line
• on a turning circle
• at the foot of a mountain
• after completing a marathon
• having got on the right tram, but going in the wrong direction.

But what did it all mean? Fucked if I know. Sounds a bit like my last job.

But back to today. What was I to do with this pair of Nordic walking poles? I decided to do what sort of seemed to come naturally, only to discover that nothing seemed very natural about them at all. Had I dared to look any passers-by in the eye, I might have caught them giggling at me. So instead, I pulled my cap down over my eyes, pointed my iPod at the backlog of Richard Bacon podcasts, and struggled on up the hill.

As mentioned, it’s not a big hill, but it is steep. This is no gentle, twisting, gradual ascent. You stand at the base and have to crane your neck to look upwards at the peak. Then you start climbing. Here and there are short bursts of steps set into the hillside, but in the main it’s just steep cindered track, most of it beneath a canopy of trees. Despite the physical effort, it’s a pleasant place to be on a Saturday afternoon in Zurich, and you quickly seem to be much further away from the department stores and clanging trams than you ever really are.

It took most of an hour to get to the top, where the reward was a splendid view over the city, and along the lake towards the Alps, even if it was too misty to get a good view of the distant mountains.

Then it was a slug of iced tea, and a steady plod along the ridge for another six or seven or miles, in the general direction of home, stopping here and there for a mouthful of malt loaf and a few photos. It felt disconcertingly autumnal up there. After that initial steep ascent, there wasn’t much more climbing to do. Most of the terrain was gently undulating forest track. At least it was a good opportunity to fine-tune my Nordic walking technique, though unfortunately I didn’t have one to fine-tune, so was unable to exploit this opportunity to the full. Or even a bit.

Eventually I reached Felsenegg where I had to decide whether to commit myself to the further 3.5 hours it would take me to get home on foot, or to wind my way down the ridge. I opted for the latter; it was already 5 p.m., and I couldn’t be certain of not getting caught out in the dark. And so I made my way down a staggeringly steep stretch of hillside to Adliswil – the same town I had ended up in last Sunday, when I approached it from the opposite direction, along the floor of the Sihl Valley.

A good day’s walk. Not especially taxing, but I needed to see off this bump that winks at me several times a day – from home, from work, and on my commute. It’s done.

As I stopped for a beer outside Horgen railway station, I was also able to reflect on that new world record, alluded to earlier. It may not have been the fastest ascent of Uetliberg in history, but I can confidently state that I am the first man ever to climb that mountain – and very possibly any mountain in the world – with a jumbo box of dishwasher tablets in his rucksack.

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