Wed 1 Jan 2003

Just 11 hours into the new year, and I'm somewhere in the middle of this lot:

Hyde Park 10K 01/01/03

More tomorrow.

Thurs 2 Jan 2003

Being a stickler for tradition, I normally like to spend the first 12 hours of the new year either drunk or asleep. But this year, at 11 o'clock on New Year's Day morning, I found myself lining up in Hyde Park for the annual 10K race.

I'm going to start writing a document called Things To Remember On Race Day. Among those items will be:

Keep breakfast to a minimum
No milk or dairy products
Never underestimate a race

I was up at 7:30, feeling hungry. Ignoring the residual wisdom scraped from the bones of previous disasters, I was soon tucking into a large bowl of cereal, two hot cross buns, a glass of grapefruit juice and a mug of milky coffee. Result? The sensation of being in an advanced stage of pregnancy. This disagreeable feeling was still with me three hours later, as I mooched round the start line in Hyde Park. I knew then that it was going to be tough.

To make things worse, I was sleepy. There are many benefits from living between two pubs. But one of the downsides, I've discovered, comes on New Years Eve.

We didn't go out, and once we'd seen the New Year in it was time for me to get some sleep. But my bedtime coincided with the point where the revellers at the pub next door decided to spill into the street for a burst of Auld Lang Syne and much snogging and hand-shaking. Then came the fireworks, with each rocket accompanied by enthusiastic cheering. When that was all over, it was the turn of the inhabitants of the other pub, across the road, to emerge and express themselves.

Sometime around three o'clock, the noise was gone, and I could sleep.

It seems to me that the longer the distance, the more preparation you have to do. For marathons, a great collection of medicines and treatments and dressings and equipment and emergency aids must be listed and amassed and worried about. Half marathons less so, and 10Ks? Pshaww! Or perhaps it's just that I'm gathering more experience of these events, and getting less intimidated.

By 8:30 I was aquaplaning along the M4. The sky was a dark, grainy grey, the rain tumultuous and bullying. Deeply unpromising.

Early on a bank holiday, particularly this one, the drive through London is a dream. Only ten or fifteen minutes to get from Hammersmith to Hyde Park, where I parked at the west end of the Serpentine.

The rain had stopped, and it was getting brighter. With still over an hour to kick off, I was heartened to see plenty of other track-suited goody-goodies like me around the place. There is always this fear that no one will turn up except me and a handful of elite runners.

Hyde Park is a great place for an event like this, on a day like this. It's a wonderful park; more spacious and unspoilt than you could think possible in this city. Let the critics disparage London and Londoners, but I've become increasingly defensive about the place. Here was Exhibit A.

I got down to the bandstand about half an hour before the start. The atmosphere was jovial and strangely civilised. Something to do with the date; something to do with the venue.

According to the results there were only 429 finishers, though I'm sure there were supposed to be more entrants than that. The rain and the date probably accounted for a number of no-shows from the ranks of the lily-livered and the pickled-livered.

After a few hundred yards, I knew for sure that this was going to be quite difficult for me. I'd weighed in at 215 pounds, which is 20 pounds heavier than I was in Chicago, just 10 or 11 weeks ago. It makes a significant difference. I just felt heavy and out of condition, not helped by too much breakfast and too little sleep.

The rain had completely covered some of the paths, giving the runners the choice of sploshing through ten yard stretches of ankle-deep water, or slithering through the same length of liquid mud alongside. I chose the mud. Running for any distance with sodden feet can result in blisters -- and I never want to experience my pre-London Marathon blister hell again.

It wasn't long before I'd taken up my favourite position, a few places ahead of the back marker. I find this a good place from which to plan my race strategy.

My Spring target is to do a 10K in under an hour. I did think I might even have a chance of doing it yesterday. I needed to run a kilometre every 6 minutes, but I never really looked like doing this, and my splits ended up as:

06:08; 06:19; 06:26; 06:38; 06:39; 06:57; 06:40; 06:56; 06:29; 06:16;

I crossed the finishing line in 404th place, out of 429.

Not a great run, but at least it gives me something to beat next time. And I guess that a New Years Day run is more symbolic than anything.

Fri 3 Jan 2003

My new toy arrived today. The Timex Speed and Distance Monitor. This is a watch that uses GPS/satellite technology to tell you how far you've run. It's intended to be the end of Autoroute hell.

I went out for a chilly 4 miler to try it out. It seems to do the job. The 3.67 mile circuit I do turns out to be 3.62 miles, and I carried on running till the watch tripped over to 4 miles. I stopped here and walked back the few hundred yards, marvelling at the data that I could recall, like the pace for each mile split, and the top and average speeds.

Another excellent running investment, and this one free of charge is a spreadsheet I've found, developed by someone called David Hays. It can be found here. Very comprehensive, and certainly more polished than the one I created.

Yeah, I've become a number slut.

Sun 5 Jan 2003

Five days into 2003, and one of the runs of the year to report.

Here was one of those frozen-but-sunny-and-windless mornings that people always list as one of their favourite things in the entire universe. Along with crispy bacon sandwiches.

I was out by ten o'clock. The lawn was still frost-crunchy, the car windows opaque with ice. Even setting off, I knew this was going to be a good one. Nine miles ahead of me, but I felt strong and enthusiastic and unusually... happy. Happiness tends to come at the end, not the beginning, of a run.

A new route today. Normally for longish runs I head for the flatness and solitude of the canal, but the recent rains have reduced the towpath to a bog in many places. Even more important than the wellbeing of my shoes are my goals for the year ahead. Bluntly, I need to become a better runner. Almost all the races I've taken part in have seen me finish in the last 10% of the field. I've not been too bothered about this up to now. Indeed I still marvel that I'm actually taking part in races at all and, even more remarkable, that I'm not in last place every time.

But I've been doing this stuff for more than a year now, and it's time to take it more seriously, and move up a bit. Take the 10K distance. Even most reasonably fit fun-runners finish in the 50-60 minutes band. The two 10Ks I've done have seen me take 65 minutes. A standard, plodder's half marathon time would be 2 hours to 2:15. All my three halfs so far have me at around the 2:30 mark (even if I have pretty good excuses for two of them).

I want to start pushing up into these categories, so I'm having to rethink the format of my runs. For instance, up till now I've fervently avoided hills, so today I chose a route that took me up FOUR steep hills. Not especially long, but sharp enough to have me aching and gasping for air. I got to the top of only one of them without walking for at least a short stretch. It's a start.

Today's run took me round some back lanes for a couple of miles, then through the tranquil grounds of the local manor house, then off up the long, straight road towards Bradfield, in its way one of the prettiest villages in the county. It's one of my favourite views -- dropping down that final hill and into the village where the houses, the school and the church form a meandering line, stepping backwards into the countryside beyond. It lifts me at anytime but on this bright wintry morning, it was more appealing than ever.

There were plenty of grinning ice patches along the way. Only once, as I loped down the other side of the first steep hill, did I feel the earth slip beneath my feet, and it startled me into taking more care of where I was putting them.

Down to the crossroads, and left through the old village. I can't tell you how uplifting it felt to run between these lovely sandstone walls, the hypnotic sun flickering through the trees. Yes, I know that the world is really all about gun-crime statistics and AIDS and global warming and buffoons like Bush and Blair..... but forgive me if I allow, just now and then, the act of running through rural England on a bright, wintry Sunday morning to make me forget all this for a few, despairingly wonderful moments.

Beyond Bradfield it was off into the open, panting countryside again. At exactly the 10k mark, the route takes another sharp left back towards home. Just here is a gem of a war memorial -- one I'd not seen before. It's hard to pass one of these heart-rending, sculptured crosses without stopping for a few moments. This one listed about 40 names, mainly from the Royal Berks Regiment, but there were two men (each described here as a "boy") who'd gone down in different ships at the Battle of Jutland. Almost every name was attached to the place they fell, and it read like a grisly top ten of World War I battlefields. The Somme, Ypres, Bapaume, Loos, Aras, Mons, Verdun... One said simply "lost somewhere in France".

It was time for a short break in any case, so I sat on the top step of the monument and spent some time with the lads. I scoff at organised religion and 'capital S' Spiritualism, but I do admit talking to these guys on occasions like this, and I like to pretend that they may hear me. I looked round at the old farm and the unspoilt lanes. A scene that would have been familiar to some of these chaps, even though they were last here ninety-odd years ago.

Do other people born decades after the First World War, feel somehow guilty about what happened?

It took a half mile to stop thinking about this. Then another hill, and onto the road back towards home. As I hit the 8 mile mark I felt strong and full of running again, and actually increased my pace, the closer I got. I could have carried on past the gate, but I wanted to stop while I still felt elevated and energised and inspired. Arriving back home, my new toy told me I'd travelled 9.36 miles. Hmmm. Nine and a half miles and god knows how many hundreds of years.

But what a great run, and what a gorgeous morning. I was overflowing with joy. The two outings earlier in the week, the Hyde Park 10K and Friday's 4-miler, typify most of my runs. I'm glad I do them, I'm happy when they're over, but they are often more work than pleasure. The reason I keep doing them is the certain knowledge that, just once in a while, a run like today's will come along. It was glorious, and it makes all the other ones worthwhile.

As I was taking my shoes off, M took my bedraggled picture. Then I celebrated with two crispy bacon sandwiches for breakfast. Does it really get better than this?

Tues 7 Jan 2003

It does get better. An early morning 4 mile run on a freezing, early January morning. Minus seven degrees, the pavements white with a patina of frozen snow. What a great feeling it was, legging it down the broad avenue through the estate, past the herd of startled deer. Everything was new and raw and fresh and exciting. I came back, pumped up and starving for everything. I think I'm beginning to see what this is all about.

Wed 8 Jan 2003

And yet better. Today at lunchtime, I peered through the venetian blinds at the office and saw a blizzard, and a couple of inches of snow on the ground. What a prospect.

Did it matter that I'd left my tracksuit top at home? And that I had no leggings? Yes, it mattered a lot. It made it even more memorable.

I made for the front door of the building, leaving a trail of incredulous stares in my wake. What do they understand? Into the snowstorm, it was like suddenly being able to breathe again. Five lovely, lonely miles around the golf course. Just me, my T-shirt and shorts and trainers - against all this lot. But I'm learning something.

It's this. Just recently I've run in torrential rain and bitter cold and a blizzard. And I'm seeing that the elements are not the enemy of runners. Or needn't be. Just the opposite. The gently shaking, sympathetic heads that peered sadly after me as I headed for the snow this afternoon, certainly believe that the snow is an opponent. Nothing but trouble to people in general. And to scantily dressed runners? Well. More than an opponent: a deadly enemy, with nothing less than murder on its mind.

No. I'm discovering just how friendly and how... purifying all this weather can be. We are beginning to like each other. We are on the same side after all.

Thurs 9 Jan 2003

At last. Back to the plodding, pedestrian 3 miler round the village at seven this morning. No soaring, inspirational highs. No love-ins with Mother Nature. Just three long, grey miles with nothing but dull pains in my knees and a sore calf muscle to keep me amused.

What a relief.

Sat 11 Jan 2003

It must be a sign of my age. My wife goes off to work, and what do I do? Slip out to the pub? Invite my mistress round? Fill a frying pan with lard and sizzling pig parts? Get my dusty Fender Stratocaster out of the loft?

No, I dress up like a schoolboy and run around the countryside for ten miles.

But it was a good run. I never quite recaptured the euphoria of last Sunday (over the same route), but the jaunt had its moments today, and overall, this was a splendid way to spend 107 minutes on a Saturday afternoon.

The sun was out again, but weaker and cooler than last weekend. The first half mile was cheerless and businesslike. In that time, I came across a number of open-mouthed, Polar explorers on their way to the Co-Op, but apart from them, and the teenagers on their ponies later on, approaching Bradfield, I think I came across no non-motorists over the entire ten miles.

After a half mile I was warm. The transition from cold to hot happens quickly. Like a jug being filled with warm water. Blood racing across a sheet of blotting paper.

The stretch down the tree-lined path through the estate was probably the highlight again. I was puzzled by the squirrels I saw here on Tuesday. Isn't January way past their bedtime? I'm no squirrologist, but I'd have thought they'd be hibernating by now.

The hills were still there, though I had to stop and walk on only one of them this week. A good sign.

Tues 14 Jan 2003

Yesterday I had some hot cross buns and cereal for breakfast. Lunch was a french stick with a lump of paté the size of a house brick. Supper began with a couple of beers while I fried up a panful of liver and onions and bacon, which we ate with thick gravy, mashed potatoes and sprouts. I polished off a bottle of Cape Pinotage, then a tub of ice cream and a wedge of stilton, with a bar of chocolate as a nightcap.

This morning I appear to be four pounds heavier than I was yesterday. Very curious.

A quick three miles this afternoon. And by my standards, I do mean quick. I think this might be one of the first times I've ever run three miles in comfortably less than half an hour.

Yesterday's food intake was clearly spot-on.

Sun 19 Jan 2003

What goes up must come down, they say. This is certainly true of the runner's self esteem. It's been a truly dreadful week. I'm writing it off and starting again.

Tuesday's rapid three miles was a good start, but it stuttered from then on. I missed my 5 miler on Wednesday, for no very good reason, and struggled to a sweaty, flabby, panting 3 miles early on Thursday. The plan was to rescue Wednesday's 5 miles by doing them on Friday but no, this didn't happen either. Instead, they popped up yesterday morning, Saturday. This was a grey and listless run along the canal. It was a foggy and strangely blank morning.

I kept telling myself that I would get up early today and do my planned seven miles, thus completing the week's target mileage after all, but even as I told myself this, I knew that it wouldn't happen. Instead I got up late, pottered about for a couple of hours, then went off to the pub to meet up with some old friends for a Sunday roast and a couple of pints. Not running fuel.

At least we managed a good stroll round the local lake after lunch. I'd never been here before, and was startled to discover that it's a celebrated haven for birds and, by extension, birdwatchers. Richard surprised me by whipping out a pair of binoculars and revealing that he is a keen twitcher - a secret he'd kept concealed from me for the last 25 years. It means that I now know what a Goldeneye Duck looks like, and a Wigeon and a Pochard. And so do you:

Goldeneye
Wigeon
Pochard

The path was muddy and soft, but I did think that perhaps it would make a good running route in drier months.

The rest of the day was spent munching chocolate and cheese, so I'm likely to feel out of sorts tomorrow. Fat, to put it another way. Monday is normally a day of rest, but tomorrow I have no excuse. I need a decent run to get back on track.

Mon 20 Jan 2003

The rain falls down on last year's man....

It poured all morning. At one o'clock I got up from my chair and went running for five miles in the most hostile conditions I've yet encountered on a run. It took, I suppose, a minute or two for the torrent to penetrate my jacket, and to seep through my hat. From that point on I felt completely liberated by the pain of it. Adversity can be exhilarating if you choose to spit in its eye.

I ran for two miles along the wild A4. It was a maelstrom. The rain came down in buckets, the wind and the traffic whistled around my ears. Every ten seconds an articulated lorry appeared like something emerging from hell, dumped another heavy puddle on me and roared on. Every one of these juggernauts seemed to tear at my clothes as it passed, and for once I was glad to be overweight. A few pounds lighter and I'd have been lifted off my feet and blown over the hedge into the flooded fields.

It was quite thrilling, and I spent much of the time screaming with laughter. I was soaked through, so what did it matter?

After two miles I turned off the main road and headed down to the canal. The rain continued, but at least it was quiet again. It was time to give my new MP3 player a run-out. We'd been to see Jez Lowe again on Saturday. This guy is one of my favourite songwriters, and I've been following him on and off for years. At one point he went off on a monologue about Leonard Cohen, and I realised I'd not listened to any of his early music for years. So today, as I trudged along the tow path, with six inches of mud trying to suck the shoes from my feet, I listened to a load of those early songs. It's still mesmerising.

Here I am. Winter. The deluge is remorseless. A gale blows. The cool rain runs down my back. Panting for miles through deep mud, along a swollen, grey canal. Listening to Leonard Cohen singing Last Year's Man and Famous Blue Raincoat.

What I found today wasn't everyone's idea of heaven.

But then I'm not everyone.

Tues 21 Jan 2003

A pedestrian, three mile plod before work. I waved expectantly to the postman. He didn't wave back.

Apart from that, nothing else didn't happen.

Wed 22 Jan 2003

Another strangely blank run this lunchtime. Yesterday's disturbing trend is continuing. What else isn't happening? What's not going on around here?

Six miles today.

Six miles. I felt tired and heavy. I've lost weight this week, but this was a different kind of heaviness. It was a lack of enthusiasm; no interest. It was a spiritual ponderousness. Why?

It struck me after a couple of these long, lethargic miles that I'd had no liquid for 15 hours, apart from a cup of coffee. That was it, I'm sure.

Talked about holidays this evening. We seem to be specialising in international pariahs, past and present. In October it was the USA, the current monster on the international stage. This year it looks like Russia in July and Cuba in November. Erstwhile enemies, now cuddly pets.

We normally keep package holidays at the other end of a bargepole, but we've found a deal that will give us a few days in Moscow and another few in St Petersburg, for significantly less than it would cost us if we booked everything separately.

Cuba will be an independent jaunt. November's a good month to stock up on sunshine,and we can get return flights for less than �400. We plan to stay in private houses, which you can do for around $20 a day, or less. Best of all, the day after we plan to arrive in Havana, it's the Marabana, the annual festival of running, with a trio of races: marathon, half marathon and 10K. I should be up for the half. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Last year, it seems, there was a torrential rain storm during the marathon. So bad that the electronic clocks all stopped working after 2 hours and 21 minutes. Consequently, every marathoner was awarded an official time of 2:21, regardless of where they finished. Another story I heard was that they provided every runner with a champion chip timer, but omitted to lay any sensor mats at the start of the race.

Yet another story was that the aid stations were dispensing green oranges and bags (yes, bags) of water. The rain got so heavy that all the officials deserted their posts to seek shelter and the oranges spilled over the road, leading to hundreds of runners falling over.

Don't tell me these things aren't true. I need to believe them.

Fri 24 Jan 2003

Despite a few pints after work last night, and the odd glass of rustic French merlot while knocking up our chow mein, I didn't feel too bad today, and decided to chalk up another four miles before it got dark.

It felt like a struggle, so I was shocked when I returned home to discover that I'd managed four miles in less than 41 minutes. It didn't feel like it, but this kind of pace, and ideally a bit faster, should be a matter of course if I'm to have any hope of reaching my targets this year. I'm aiming for a 2 hours 10 minute half marathon, which shakes down to a shade under 10 minutes a mile - a bit faster than today.

I had a mail from Tom, my football pal in Ohio, this morning. He wrote: I believe that President Bush has lost his mind. Recently, the unbridled arrogance of U.S. politicians has really gotten my attention. They speak as if they rule the world, and I can just hear people in Europe, sitting in their living rooms, listening to the same things I hear, and imagine them rolling their eyes and sighing. I find myself in the very uncomfortable position of wishing some catastrophe upon U.S. troops, with whom I have no real beef, in order to teach the idiots in control of this rogue nation a lesson. I hope there is still a way to avert war, but I am not optimistic.

Hmm. Nor am I.

And for Tom's sake, I hope the CIA don't read this stuff....

Sat 25 Jan 2003

Twelve miles along the canal today, and it was tough. Perhaps it was last night's bottle of Southern French Viognier (�4.99 from the Co-Op, good stuff). Or was it those two fried egg sandwiches I had for breakfast?

It was a pleasant enough day. Patchy sun, and fairly warm. There were a few swans about, and a heron on the weir. Quite a few walkers but no one else running.

The run wasn't a disaster. Far from it. But it got tiring after 6 miles or so, and there were a few brief walk-breaks through the second half.

It doesn't matter. Ihave to keep reminding myself that I'm not training for a marathon, even though I am following Hal Higdon's novice marathon training schedule. So these runs are not critical; the programme is just a bit of scaffolding to hang a routine from. As it happens, just about all the runs have been done so far, and it's all good preparation for the half marathons coming up in March. There shouldn't be any need to go above today's distance this side of those races. Twelve miles may be too long already. Normal half marathon training normally finishes around the ten or eleven mile mark.

If all goes well with the March races, I'll have a go at Hal Higdon's 12-week Spring training programme. It's designed to be preparation for an autumn marathon schedule. I might even decide it's time to step up to the Intermediate level.

Ooo-er.

Thurs 30 Jan 2003

What a disastrous running week it's been. Nothing since Saturday. Five useless days.

Why?

[Shrugs languidly. Gazes through the window at the snow. But is that expression wistfulness, or indifference?]

I don't know why. Sometimes it happens. Last time the weather was this atrocious, early in the month, I delighted in stripping off and plunging into the frozen world. This time it's less appealing.

Things will get better.

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