Tues 3 August 2004 - Huddersfield

Sisyphus rides again. When it comes to health and wellbeing, I work a kind of shift system. 4 days on, 3 days off.

Last Friday, after the previous evening's life-affirming jog-climb in Wharfedale, the culmination of a week of good, interesting running and textbook nutrition, I was at the top of my game. Yes, I was knackered, but nice-knackered. Post-coital nice-knackered. Finished-digging-a-bed-and-planting-all-your-veg nice-knackered. End-of-a-race nice knackered. So keen and enthusiastic did I feel, that my eyes must have looked like headlamps, shining into every dark corner of my daily routine, illuminating every work problem, sweeping out every last shred of pessimism. All was alive and alert and crackling with healthy appetite. I'd lost 5 pounds in 4 days. I was a walking advert for the benefits of moderate exercise and a healthy diet.

Then Saturday appeared, and it was time to relax a little. After an indifferent afternoon run, some beer seemed a harmless idea. Then a few glasses of wine wouldn't hurt. And some late-night Stilton. And ice-cream. I'd pushed open that door again, and here I was, descending the helter skelter in the darkness. By Sunday, all resistance had been dismantled. A bad day, followed by a worse day on Monday (yesterday), leaving me 6 pounds heavier than Friday, and feeling lifeless and bored.

So near, yet so far. It's like the prayer of the convent girl: "Please God, make me chaste. But not just yet."

It's given me plenty of food for thought, and I'm struck at the similarities between this and stopping smoking. I tried for years to give up cigarettes. Short bursts of abstinence, during which I felt holy and elated. Then a sudden crumbling of resolve. "Just one won't hurt." Followed by an unstoppable avalanche of poisons to sweep me back to square one. Eventually, my patience ran out with these wild oscillations, and I stopped by taking a more measured, cerebral approach. It finally worked. There's a lesson there.

One of the problems with my approach to stopping smoking, I realised much later, was that I never really believed that I wouldn't smoke again. The thought actually consoled me somehow during the withdrawal period. "It's OK, it won't last forever". Utterly self-defeating, of course. Resolution, clarity of purpose, have to be the foundation of any attempted change, and if it isn't there, or if it's made of blancmange, the outcome is predictable. It seems many of us do the same with eating and drinking badly. Perhaps I haven't quite decided, or realised, that this should be a permanent change, instead of just some temporary deprivation in the approach to a race. I can happily go days, weeks, without alcohol, but when I do drink it seems to change my entire attitude to eating. If I'm enjoying some decent red wine, it seems unreasonable not to eat well too, though 'eating well' usually means the exact opposite in practice. And once the door has been pushed ajar, that's it. I go crashing through it without investigating what might be on the other side.

It has to stop. It will stop. But please, God. Not just yet.

Today was heading down the same black hole as the weekend, but I managed to turn it round. A stodgy lunch and a few afternoon raids on the chocolate machine, and there I was, almost writing off my running plans for the week. Then an emailed invitation arrived. Did I fancy another walk/run in Wharfedale tomorrow night? My instincts were no, but then I saw that someone may be throwing me a lifeline here, so I mailed back to say OK.

My problem now is that I have 24 hours to 'get my head right', even if my body won't be. So I did what I had to do, and what I didn't feel like doing at all. I went for a run.

It was one of those bloated, bouncy, bilious plods, and took me up the Wakefield Road for a couple of miles. It was good to run in the rain again. I haven't seen a pavement sparkle like this, or heard that shallow puddle-slap sound, for weeks. And drizzle was just the right weather to accompany the view of Sainsbury's and the canal, and all those grim little second-hand shops that no one has ever been seen to enter, or more worrying, to leave. Two miles took me past the Tolson Museum, the town's cultural and historical archive, and a place I've still not visited, to the fork in the road where the driver has to make that rather uninspiring choice between Sheffield and Wakefield. Perhaps I was making a statement, but it was here that I stopped, turned, and began the return journey.

Nearly 4 miles, feeling like a decent vomit here and there, but managing to hold it in. Got back, showered and changed, and felt suddenly much better prepared for the week.

Sun 8 August 2004

And again, although this time I have more of an excuse.

The "again" applies to various things. The end-of-the-week collapse, for instance, though a combination of the start of the football season with its social commitments, and the weekend visit of some friends from Lancashire, are cast iron get-outs. Aren't they?

Then there's the small matter of yet another abortive long run. This one happened on Friday. I'd taken the day off and come home a day early, so decided to do the long weekend run on Friday morning. But energy deserted me again, and my 5 miles were stop-start. I was defeated by three things: the oppressive midday heat, the fatigue I still felt from Wednesday night's repeated 8 mile run-walk in Wharfedale, and boredom. The standard canal run has become an uninspiring trudge. Combined with the other two things, the supposed 10 mile run never had much chance of happening. After 5 miles I gave up. Pathetic. My legs were leaden and aching, but so was my spirit.

I need to get a grip here. Next weekend is supposed to be the Burnham Beeches half marathon. It's a hilly, hot event, and at the moment there seems little chance of getting round it. By now I should have been feeling sleek and energised. Since I made that resolution, three weeks ago, I've run plenty of hills, as planned, but I've somehow managed to find four more pounds to carry round the 13 mountainous miles.

Time for a line to be drawn in the sand. Yet again.

Tues 10 August 2004 - Huddersfield

Time for another false dawn, surely. It must be at least a week since the last time I made a declaration about a new regime that I knew I couldn't keep.

And at least a week since I had a decent run, too. This, yawn, will all change early tomorrow morning, mmmm yeah, when I'll get out there in the sodden streets of Huddersfield to start off a new era, yeah right, of running and rude good health.

Who writes this stuff?

The weather has sucked the country of energy in the past few days. The weekend was sweltering and humid. This moved seamlessly into two days of torrential rain and flooding. Even the start of a new football season on Saturday couldn't hoist my spirits too high, as we drew an uninspiring game with Rotherham. I guzzled much beer through the day, then spent the evening with a stodgy Polish meal and some friends down from Lancashire, accompanied by more toxic liquids. Felt gloomy the next day. Not hangover-gloomy but sort of runlessness gloomy.

I'm beginning to believe my own propaganda. Running is the answer is a motto of mine, and I've started to suspect that it might actually be true. It really does make me feel good, to the point where the absence of running seems to make me feel bad. Perhaps this is how I always used to feel, but thought it was normal.

Running is the opposite of chocolate. I mused on this at lunchtime today as I bought my Kit-Kat and Double Decker. The ephemeral and almost unbearable pleasure of chomping chocolate, followed by those hours of bloated lethargy, is the reverse of running. Here you endure a burst of inconvenience, breathlessness, joint pain and occasional public ridicule because it's a great trade for hours of energy, enthusiasm and that glow of physical wellbeing. It all comes down to our ability and willingness to defer pleasure. To invest first and enjoy the reward later. Unhappily, it's anathema to us. We like jam today and more jam tomorrow, and even though that almost never happens, we fool ourselves that this time it might.

Maybe it's yet another dismal sign of ageing, but I'm increasingly beginning to think that deferring reward is the better option. I pondered today on where buying my weekly lottery ticket fits into this paradigm. At first I thought it was deferred reward. Discomfort first (shelling out for the ticket), reward later (winning a prize). Hmm, no. The weakness of this view is obvious. I rarely win anything. In fact it's the opposite, I then thought. Jam today. The pound I spend buys me hope, which is enjoyable. Or at least reassuring. The draw, and the realisation that I've not won anything, and the weekly reminder that I'm wasting my money, is the deferred discomfort. But then I thought about it some more, and decided that the hope was the big thing. Well worth a pound. I knew I'd almost certainly never win the jackpot, but that didn't matter. The pound I spend is a pretty good price for the umbrella of fantasy beneath which I can shelter from those grey incessant rains of routine.

So tomorrow morning, I run again. Tomorrow morning, 7 hours from now, I invite self esteem and energy and appetite back into my life.

And on the way back, I will buy my lottery ticket, and with it, a brief holiday in dreamland.

Wed 11 August 2004 - Huddersfield

It wasn't pretty, but it sort of happened. Woke at 6am and prevaricated for an hour before getting up and out onto the damp streets of Huddersfield.

I switched hotel last week, but am now back at the George, no longer believing this to be such a sleaze-hole. Last week's grim experience at the low end of town, with its throbbing discos and pissed-up, door-banging neighbours and three-in-the-morning fire alarms was instructive. The George may be frayed at the edges but I can normally get an undisturbed night's sleep here. It's actually quite a famous hotel, its name being whispered with reverence in rugby league circles all over the world, apparently. It was here, in 1895, at a rowdy meeting in the downstairs bar, that the governing body of rugby split apart. The sniffy southern union was to remain amateur for another century or so, but professional rugby league was born that evening, and has remained a northern game ever since.

The hotel has seen better days. Trotting down the carpeted stairs at 7 this morning, it was slightly sad to see that ice buckets bearing such legendary names as Krug, Taittinger and Bollinger are now being used for nothing better than catching the rainwater that seeps through the ceiling.

I trotted around the streets for just a couple of miles, barely breaking into a sweat. Up Hillhouse Lane again, past Great Northern Street and the timber yard. Which reminded me that I got my info wrong recently, when I mentioned Peter Sutcliffe leaving the body of Helen Rytka under the railway bridge here. In fact, she was dumped in the wood yard on the corner. I'd got my serial-killer victims mixed up, as you do. I was thinking about this as I passed under the bridge, where I noticed a couple of prostitutes loitering. The idea of plying for trade at 7:15 on a rainy Wednesday morning in Huddersfield seemed depressing enough, but there was also the knowledge that this was the precise spot where Sutcliffe's wretched victim was picked up. I wondered if these women knew about all this. They certainly weren't alive in 1978, when it happened. But the spot has clearly retained its popularity as the town's modest little red-light district.

As I trudged up Willow Lane, I wondered how it was that I have lived on page 62 of every mapbook I've ever owned. Then round the corner, and the lovely surprise of St John's church. It shouldn't be a surprise -- I've seen it a thousand times -- but somehow it always is. A beautiful building, occupying an unlikely place.

That was it. I half considered turning right and finding a murderous hill on which to dissolve what was left of my spirit, but the often conflicting voices of my inner parliament this time were unanimous in their opposition to the motion. Without even waiting for the votes to be counted, I turned instead and headed for home.

Thurs 12 August 2004 - Huddersfield

"Avoid Huddersfield at all costs. I can't exaggerate how awful it is there at the moment".

No, this advice comes not from me or some other hotel victim, but from the chap who does the traffic on Radio Leeds. His warning, earlier this evening, was referring to the flooding that has closed off half the town. Fortunately I heard the tip before I set off from Leeds, and was able to exploit my local knowledge to good effect. But I did ponder the words as I drove back, and have decided I need to get back to Leeds next week. Nostalgia is all very well, but it's gone a bit too far this time.

Another brief clatter round the town this morning for a couple of miles. Nothing to report. Nothing.

Fri 13 August 2004

By the time I was 18, I'd fallen in love a hundred or so times. One of my victims was a racehorse called Wollow, and like most of my relationships, it was fun while it lasted, but at the end, I felt kinda let down.

They later said that a piece of metal, a fastener, had twisted under her saddle. Twisted under her saddle, pierced her flank and distracted her. Someone more cynical said that her trainer had been bought off. Maybe she just wasn't as good as I thought. But anyway, the long and the short of it is that she won me a stack of money through the unforgettable spring of 1976, the same spring that QPR were top of the league. But when the big one came, I put Ł10 instead of my normal Ł5 on her, and that was just too terrible for words.

Through the painful prism of time, I can see that my despair then was actually an investment whose dividends through the years matched the losses I would have made had I carried on betting on horses. After that cataclysmic day, I resolved never to bet on another racehorse. Had Wollow won the Derby in 1976, life would have been much worse in the end. She lost. She lost, and she lost just a month after QPR were crowbarred into second place in the league after months in the top spot.

It's All Over Now Baby Blue.

Shit. What a long, terrible summer that was.

I rediscovered recreational gambling when an uncharacteristically generous Chancellor of the Exchequer declared an end to tax on betting, 5 or so years ago. Labour had just regained power, and Gordon Brown must have felt like a Best Man with a couple of glasses of Marks and Spencers' Cava inside him. His mood was good. What he decreed meant that the intelligent punter did, at last, have a better chance of making a profit. Which is what I've done. I bet occasionally on football and politics, and have done pretty well.

Why am I confessing all this? Only that I mentioned to M last weekend that I quite fancied a Palm Pilot or similar. Understandably, she hissed. So I stacked a few quid on the West Ham v Reading match. West Ham to win; West Ham to be level at half time but to win in the end; no goals to be scored before the 27th minute; the match to have fewer than 11 corners. All my bets came in, and with my profit, I was able to buy my Palm T3 without guilt, and with no marital hatchet buried in the back of my skull.

One of the first things I did was to scout round the internet for free software, as one does. I came across a sports database, and downloaded it. Scanning through the years I arrived at 1976. "Lester Piggott wins the Epsom Derby on Emperie. Liverpool win the football league". And that was it. That's all it said.

If only they knew.

Sun 15 August 2004

AII histopic entdy. as its cweated entipely on a haad-held jobbie. Its changed my lite. I caa now sit in the pub on a Sunday aften@@n aad watch the ftball have afew bevvies and write the stvpff for the site withut the iacareaieace of neediag a keyboapd aaa alt that caper. I caa jvst write oa the scpeea with oae of these stylus thiags aad thats it. Technolgy is Warvellovs isnt it.

Tues 17 August 2004 - Leeds

I thought about running today.

I thought about it while I sat in the hotel restaurant, finishing a bottle of reasonable Coonawarra Cabernet-Shiraz, reflecting on my pork and mash, and cheese and biscuits.

Thurs 19 August 2004 - Leeds

Keeping an online running log is a double-edged sword. When things go well, and they occasionally do, it feels good to be able to describe them here. When things go badly, it gets kinda embarrassing, as I have to keep dragging myself back to my own torture chamber. This week is another write-off. The Dublin marathon at the end of October is not a realistic target now, but so be it.

Excuses? Of course I have excuses. Look.

[Takes box from under the desk and tips out contents. Picks up scrap of paper and peers at it.]

What's this one? "Working away from home disrupts routine".

[Screws it up and throws it over shoulder. Picks up another handful.]

"Working away from home makes it hard to eat properly".

"Working away from home means I can't get to running club".

"It's too hot and dry. If only we had some rain".

"It's too cold and wet. If only the sun would come out".

"I hate my job so much that it's making me depressed and demotivated".

"I'm too stressed out by being crap at my job".

[Picks out another at random.]

Ha! Here's a good one: "Too much beer encouraged by start of football season".

And so it goes on. There are dozens more where they came from.

All of them are true. Or let's say that all of them contribute to a general feeling of floppiness and demotivation. But this isn't the whole story, is it? Because just a couple of weeks ago, while still working away from home, all was going swimmingly. It's that snowball idea again. It's the accumulator effect. Negative momentum.

Motivation is the god of running. It's the spark that starts the fire and the fuel that keeps it burning. For many of us, maintaining our enthusiasm for running really is like trying to keep a campfire burning on a windy night. This constant struggle against ourselves and our self-esteem is part of the game, and the way we approach it becomes part of the journey of self-discovery.

I read that paragraph recently while looking through one of last year's notebooks. It's written with the kind of lofty self-confidence that you feel when things are going well. So, what has my journey of self-discovery revealed to me?

Well imagine there are two paths, each a hundred metres long. One has rose petals covering the first 10 metres, and grit for the remaining 90. The other one has grit for the first 10 metres and rose petals for the remaining 90. I can see both clearly, and having been down both many times, I know which is the best one to take. Despite this, I still find myself going down the first one instead of the second. Isn't that a funny thing?

It's all to do with toxins, he said mysteriously.

But I don't have much patience for hand-wringing. When I hear people drone on about how terrible things are, I feel myself going hot inside, and want to slap them hard. So let's have no more of it here. Just a detached assessment and... no, hang on, let's have less of the assessment. We know that things are bad, and there's no point in dwelling on it. What I need is a plan. Yes, another one. OK, I know. It's not really a plan I need. I have the plan. Loads of them. If you look outside my window, you'll see mountains of them, piled up beside the dustbin. It's not a plan I need, it's the attention span and the good sense to carry it through.

This week, it really will be different.

Hurrumph.

Sun 22 August 2004

Well, at least I had the foresight to post my prediction on the Runners World forum long before the event, that Paula Radcliffe wouldn't finish today's marathon in Athens. I wish the prediction hadn't come true - it was a desperate sight.

Her pulling up at the 36 kilometre mark, disorientated, weeping, will be one of those abiding Olympic memories. Somehow the failures stick in the mind more than the triumphs.

Mon 23 August 2004 - Leeds

The shadow of Paula Radcliffe's marathon failure has been everywhere today. There's been a lot of sympathy, but I've been slightly shocked by some of the negative opinion that's been doing the rounds of the radio phone-ins and the canteen. At lunch today, I heard two plump women on the adjoining table mumbling their disgust through mouthfuls of chips. "She was like a spoilt child", said one. "Just because she didn't think she'd win a medal, she couldn't be bothered anymore. "Yeah. She could of at least finished", whined the other, wiping the ketchup from her moustache with the back of her hand. "But she just couldn't be arsed".

I suspect that in the puffy eyes of these two, Paula Radcliffe's real crime was to be thin. I almost said so, but thought better of it.

Today's supposed to be the first day of my revitalisation, and things haven't gone too badly. No run was planned. I had to drive up to Leeds at the crack of dawn, and anyway, it's against my religion to run on a Monday. Instead, my mission was to kick-start some sort of, sigh, sensible eating lifestyle. Only 3 toffees in 240 miles was about ten percent of the usual rate, so that was a successful-enough start. A salad for lunch and just fruit this evening rounded off a good day.

Tomorrow morning I'll run. It's got to happen. After Paula's flop, it has become my responsibility to fly the flag for British athletics once again. I've laid out my gear, set the alarm for 6:15, and plan to have an early night.

Come on you fat git, you can do it. A couple of unscheduled weeks off isn't a crime, but it's time to get to work again.

Tues 24 August 2004 - Leeds

I went downstairs in my running gear at 6:45 this morning. Just before reaching the door, I picked up a copy of The Guardian and started to read Steve Cram's piece about Paula Radcliffe. Eventually, the drifting smell of fried bacon hit my nostrils, and that was it. Instead of running, I had a bowl of fruit and a yoghurt. Sadly, it didn't stop there. Here comes a plate of egg-on-toast, beans-on-toast and sausages. And here's more toast and jam and a croissant. Over my second cup of mocha, I decided that perhaps I wouldn't run this morning after all.

Pathetic performance.

As a kind of penance, I visited the supermarket at lunchtime to stock the small greengrocery I am constructing under my desk. This subtabular project gives me something to do when I need a diversion from the reality that occasionally threatens to appear on top of the desk. Doesn't happen too often, fortunately.

So I spent all afternoon on the frugivorous Antonio diet. But. But then 6 o'clock arrived and I was hit by a nutritional exocet. Five bars of chocolate. It was supposed to be only 4, but the machine gave me two Flytes instead of one. It seemed over-saintly to post one back to the operator of the machine, so I had to eat it. You can see how misfortune forces me into bad dietary habits.

Worse was to come.

An hour or two later we set off to watch the Leeds - Huddersfield match, a throbbing cup tie between two local rivals, played in front of 30,000 baying Yorkshiremen. I invited along three pukka Indian guys I work with. It was their first experience of a real football match, and they were overwhelmed by the noise and the excitement of it all. It seemed only right to discuss the experience over a few beers and an extensive curry after the game.

I felt so heavy when I went to bed that I decided that should I fall out of bed in the night, the weight/velocity/distance-to-floor ratio would send me crashing through all 9 floors of the hotel.

I consoled myself with the thought that at least I'd be first in the queue for breakfast.

Wed 25 August 2004 - Leeds

Not only did I resist breakfast this morning, but this evening I ran.

Yes, I ran. Just over 3 miles along the canal on a cool evening. It wasn't easy. My physiology was traumatised.

The Leeds & Liverpool canal isn't a particularly relaxing place to run, as I've mentioned before. It seems not to be a recreational route, like ye merrye olde tow-pathes of home. You use this path to get somewhere, though in my case, god knows where that might be.

Is this the kick-start I needed? If I'm honest, no, I don't think so. There's some hard work to do first, but it may just be a step towards that kick start.

Thurs 26 August 2004 - Leeds

Katy. A nice sort of name, I've always thought. This was borne out by an email I received this morning from someone with that chummy designation, allowing me a late entry to the ingeniously named "Oracle To Oracle" 10K race (and just as craftily shortened to O2O10K in the blurb), a week on Sunday.

I'd been thinking about what I'd said yesterday about the kick-start, and decided that a shortish race would be a good one. This one fitted the bill nicely but the last entry date had passed. I mailed the organisers and good egg Katy replied with a dispensation. Hurrah!

The race is localish and gives me 10 days to lose a few pounds and rediscover some kind of elementary fitness, at least enough to run 6 miles without stopping. If I can manage that, the world of athletics is mine for the taking.

Words are arresting things. I was speaking to someone yesterday and used the word Chechnya. The moment I said it, I knew it was the first time I'd ever spoken it, despite hearing it a thousand times in the past year or two. Just now, the word Austerlitz came into my head, for no obviously good reason. It must have some significance for me, but I don't know why just at the moment. I'm sure Mister Google will be able to assist, but until then I'm going to dwell in this deliciously irritating state, trying to recall what this word means and why I should care.

[Later that day...]

A remarkably good run this evening. In the strange vocabulary of the runner, this can be translated as: this evening I had a very hard and unpleasant run. Describing it as "good" is something you can do later, after it's over.

It was only 3.5 miles, but after 3 weeks of almost total inactivity, and being 4 pounds heavier than I was when a few weeks ago I trumpeted the start of a new, serious health campaign, it was enough. No stops, and bizarrely, the fastest pace I've run in almost 3 months. I won't humiliate myself by saying what that pace was, but I was pleased.

I used to think that living next door to a pub that's in the Good Beer Guide represented the final piece in the jigsaw. All aspirations satisfied. Then I discovered running. I haven't forgotten what I said a few months ago, that I want to attack all my PBs in the coming months. I'd been weighing up the pros and cons of an easy running life, comparing it with a more competitive approach. It's a persistent and pertinent question for all inhabitants of Plodderama. Do we just run to feel better? To collect a few smug also-ran medals? Or do we keep trying to raise the bar, even if the bar might not be very high? Perhaps because the bar isn't very high. There's no right and wrong answer to that, and the answer won't stay the same even for one person. I'm still learning this stuff, and one mistake I made was to presume that because I'd started from such a low base, I was bound to keep on getting faster and fitter and lighter if I just kept on running. That didn't happen, but it took a long time to realise it. When I did finally twig, I sort of shrugged my shoulders about it. I'd found a comfort zone. And for a while it was cosy enough not to question it. But eventually, I thought better of it, and decided to invite this extra, competitive dimension back in. I'll never be competitive in the purest sense. I can't ever see a time when I'll be trying to win a race, unless they introduce a new Fat Bastard category.

All that remains, if you wish to accept it, is the battle against yourself. The urge to beat previous times. For a while, I even gave up on this. Then I had my spell of frank introspection, and decided it was worth getting serious again. Since then, I've blown hot and cold, but the intention remains. Up to and including next spring, I intend breaking my very modest PBs at all distances I'ev done so far: 10K, 10 miles, half marathon, 20 miles, marathon.

To have a hope, I need to get back to running standard 10 minute miles in training, then start to push below that for races. It will take a while, but this week's been a promising new start.

Fri 27 August 2004 - Leeds

A brief, and even more rapid, run this morning before breakfast.

The big sporting news of the day, second only to QPR's magnificent victory at Gillingham, was Paula Radcliffe's decision to enter this evening's Olympic 10K, creating the possibility of a glorious resurrection after last weekend's high profile marathon failure. As we all know, she pulled up in the 10K as well, opening up yet more excellent schadenfreude opportunities for the British public.

More of this later. I can feel an ugly rant coming on...

Sat 28 August 2004

She may sound like an Irish property company, but Kelly Holmes is actually our latest star of the Olympics. How good to see someone who's struggled for so long, finally get the prize she's been reaching for.

Received the latest edition of Runners World this morning. I describe it as the latest edition, but quite honestly, I'm never sure. They should make the date more prominent on the cover, because I swear this is the main difference from one month to the next. I enjoy reading it, but it's terribly formulaic. I long for some good, reflective writing on running, more emphasis on the slower end of the field, and more wackiness.

Among the articles that seems to be repeated each month is one called 5 Weeks To The Shape Of Your Life: Leaner, Stronger, Faster. My eyes tend to wander, glassily, through these pieces, hoovering up minor nuggets of information here and there, and tips which I throw into a box at the back of my mind labelled Interesting Ideas I'll Never Get Round To. I read this article today, and wondered if people ever follow these plans and introduce all these things into the routine. Probably not, I decided. Then something weird happened. I had an idea that scared me. It scared me so much that I felt my hair do a sort of Mexican wave as the idea passed across my head. But the thought had been thunk, and there was no way of unthinking it. Yes. I thought: why don't I try following this plan? Not because it's new and interesting, but just... Just what? Just to see, I suppose. And perhaps to give the next few weeks' training a boot up the jacksie.

But I need to think about this...

Tues 31 August 2004 - Leeds

I've abandoned the idea of embracing the principles of RW's5 Weeks To The Shape Of Your Life: Leaner, Stronger, Faster, because I read it again and it's too silly. But I still have my, er, guinea pig hat on, so I'll look out for something similar.

I'm pretty upbeat at the moment. Today's a rest day, but I've run for the last 6 days, an average of just over 3½ miles a time. Not long, but designed to chip away at my fantastic levels of unfitness. The blip was Sunday, when we popped next door for our neighbour's bank holiday barbecue. It was a traditional English summer al fresco happening. We stood around in overcoats, gloves, scarves and woolly bobble hats, crunching lumps of frozen Muscadet, chomping charred animal remains, and making small talk about property prices.

It was a great event actually. A bit overcast in places but we did squeeze in a drunken rounders match, and generally feasted well. Our social life isn't what it used to be before we moved down from t'North, so it was good to meet a few new faces.

Earlier in the day I'd chugged round the village on my old 'round the block' course. At a pace of 10:40 per mile, this will seem like a painfully slow jog to many, but in fact it was the quickest run since the Hogweed Trot 10K at the end of May.

And yesterday I went one better, although I was doing intervals so they don't really count.

Phew! That was a close call. I'll make a full confession:- I began typing the details of the intervals and the times, but managed to pull back before too much damage was done. I've long had this theory that other people's training details are stupendously boring, and of no consequence to anyone. I tend to think of people who read this as casual passers-by, with everyone looking for an excuse to go and do something more useful. Listing intervals is like handing out a welcoming cup of arsenic to every visitor.

Sorry. It was a close call. Managed to swap that tray of poison for a tray of nice, warming Horlicks. Yep. Plenty of Horlicks available here. All bloody year bloody round.

See you in September.

To comment on this, or anything else, please visit the Forum.

<<< last month | next month >>>