Mon 6 Dec 2004

Did the recent silence signify the visitation of some new gluttonous catastrophe about which I had to keep quiet?

No. Just the opposite. Since last Tuesday's gloomy plod through the twilit backstreets of the running universe, I've had three great runs including a peaceful 6 miles yesterday - my first trip back along the canal since last month's train disaster. Nothing remains to remind us that it happened.

I've also had two long, unconventional cross-training sessions, with the result that we have a new beech hedge planted. Hard work but a thrillingly raw and manly activity for early winter afternoons as the light fades...

Another tough task achieved this past weekend was the arrival at a decision about my spring marathon. Would it be Padua or Madrid? I toyed with the idea of one, then the other. Suddenly, at last, the answer seemed obvious, and I was able to go ahead and book my place.

April 24th, I'll be running the marathon in... Hamburg.

This week is the start of my 4-weeks of base training before the real training schedule starts after Christmas. Four weeks when I have to get the routine right and run a steady 20-25 miles each week.

This is it, lads.

Tues 7 Dec 2004

Ahead of schedule already. Instead of my required 3 miler today, I managed a rather grey and drizzly 3.7 miles.

This marathon training lark is easier than some folks claim.

I was, however, slightly perturbed by a description I read today of the Cliveden cross-country on December 27th. I decided a while ago that it was time I entered a cross country race, and this one seemed, as they say, a good idea at the time. But according to a message on the RW forum, "There's a long flight of steps built into the hillside, and you have to go up once near the beginning of the race and again near the end. In between times there is another, steeper, set of narrow steps hacked into a hillside and that really gives you jelly legs - even walking up. The rest is just normal with some undulations and a couple of steep downhill bits. Its tough, no doubt about it."

That'll teach me.

Wed 8 Dec 2004

A Guardian journo is planning to run his first marathon in London next year, and has asked for advice. I was scanning the cerebral replies, and this one stood out:

"Ideally, don't bother. A Marathon run is a cultural construction and is not worth messing up your knees and/or ankles for, in my opinion.

If, as a journalist, your income depends on doing these things, and you're going to anyway, don't compete, with yourself or deadlines (or other runners, many of whom may be "colleagues"). Stop and walk whenever you feel like it. Go to the pub even, but only briefly if you want to finish the course. Long runs for sedentary populations are extremely hazardous, but you can mitigate the worst effects of these extreme endeavours - just don't think of it as "the race of -- life", or as anything that is worth jeopardising physical or emotional health for."

I sort of wish I hadn't seen someone describe it as a "cultural construction", because in my most cynical moments I'm tempted to send my suspicions to sniff out similar avenues.

Just over 4 miles today through another overcast, damp afternoon. The usual route, but one I remain strangely unbored by:

Out of the gate and immediately past the pub, ancient hotel, primary school and the Hanoverian church that Constable came to sketch. Left past the doctor's surgery and the social club and the less celebrated, Catholic church. Then a longish stretch which takes me out past the school playing fields into open country. Right into a long, narrow lane by the golf course, between tall, bedraggled beech hedges. A couple of houses appear at the one mile point, then it's past the reopened pub and out into another stretch of open countryside for half a mile. Across the busy A340 and down a long narrow lane of tidy arts and crafts houses (like my own, built around 1920 as local authority stock). This part of the run has a kind of village green feel to it. There's an old fire-station and post office, and most of the houses are covered in ivy and wisteria. Today I noticed the pungent aroma of the horses in the large field on the other side of the road. There were a dozen of them there, chomping on hay and looking as magnificent as horses often do in the winter. The unmistakable equine bouquet instantly illuminated a forgotten corner of my childhood - visiting the Horse Of The Year Show at Wembley. Never paid to get in of course. I lived round the corner, and we used to go and wander round the stables, offering sugar lumps and Polo mints to the horses and being generally offensive and boorish to the middle classes.

Just past the two mile mark is the small garden centre, the 15th century church and the deer park. Here I swing left into the best part of the run, a long gravel avenue by the lake, where often I'll see a graceful heron. It's quiet and peaceful here, usually with hundreds of deer scampering round beneath the oaks. None to be seen today, so perhaps these delightful creatures have been herded off somewhere warm and safe for the winter. Or perhaps they've been butchered for the Christmas table.

Eventually I'm through the gates and across the A340 once again, taking me up to the three mile point. Here it's back down through the heaps of slippery leaves to the village where I rejoin the main road past the church, primary school, hotel and pub, and home. Some calf stretches, leaning against the car, and I'm done.

I'm slowly beginning to understand stretching, and to see that doing it successfully is pleasant. A good stretch should be a relief, like drinking a cool pint of Fuller's London Pride when thirsty, or emptying your bladder once another four of the same have been consumed. I get that sense of relief now when I do calf stretches after a run. But only calf stretches. I haven't yet worked out how to make quad stretches as blissful, so they must remain on my To Do list.

And not very near the top of it, it has to be conceded.

Thurs 9 Dec 2004

4.2 miles along the canal this afternoon. One has to practise that 0.2 mile appendage.

Apparently it's Christmas soon. I asked the greeter in Halford's why they were playing a dub reggae version of Auld Lang Syne, and he told me. You heard it here first.

That's almost it for today. It's late, and I am sleepy. Instead of my stuff, treat yourself to some real running writing. I reminded myself of this earlier this evening, and had to go and read it again. It's by Julie Welch, my favourite running writer.

Wed 16 Dec 2004 - Amsterdam

There is, as my work-colleague, Paul, commented, "something indefinably... foreign about Holland".

He's right about most things, and he's right about this. It's undeniable, and it's part of the charming enigma of the Dutch. It's only because they are so similar to us in almost every other way that the difference between us is so distinct. But what is that difference?

I thought I might have a reasonable chance of coming up with some answers this evening as I sped half-naked through a darkened suburb of Amsterdam. It probably isn't really a suburb, but as Bussum is only about half an hour on the train from Schiphol Airport and the city centre, on the road to Utrecht, I think of it like that. If it's less than an hour from the centre of the capital, it must be a suburb. Sorry - that's the Londoner in me. The hotel website doesn't shed much further light on the matter, noting only that Bussum is "located among the heather fields of het Gooi". No idea what this means.

My four colleagues have gone to enjoy the reddish glow of Amsterdam while I stayed here to run. Bussum isn't quite as comforting and as cosy as the name may suggest, but it's pleasant enough. Typically Dutch: civilised and nicely swept. I ran 4½ miles around the perimeter of the town, past the Argentinian and Indonesian restaurants - and past McDonalds too, it should be said. Out the other end and into a neat residential area with its festive, illuminated shrubbery and bay windows festooned with seasonal tinsel. Then it was round some sort of small lake from which I think I could hear some exotic seabird crying out in a markedly Dutch accent.

Then back again, this time round the other edge of the town, through a small industrial estate, and across an open green area back towards the homely glow of the hotel. The lights were a welcome sight, and as I plodded gleefully through the park, I passed a bench on which a craggy old man sat, smoking a pipe. As I approached, he called out to me, and held out his hand. "I don't understand Dutch", I panted, "Even if I did, I've no money on me." He laughed, evidently enjoying the joke. "That's OK!", he called back at me, "It's Christmas! I'm feeling generous to you!"

And there it was. The difference between the Dutch and the Brits. In Holland, even the tramps can make intellectually challenging witticisms in a variety of foreign languages. Ours just gouge your eyes out.

I didn't envy him his domicile. It was a black and freezing night. Literally freezing. Minus 4 degrees. A grand night for running though. As I'd left the hotel, my workmates were in the bar, enjoying a pre-jaunt glass or two of something warming. They underwent a vicarious, communal wince at the sight of my bare legs. (At least, I think that's what it was.)

It's the old story. Being felt sorry for, when I'm the fortunate one.

Great run. Grinning all the way.

Sun 19 Dec 2004

An undeservedly good run this morning.

It's supposed to be a dry month of course, but on Friday I had some good news, and had to absorb a couple of pints to cool down. Then yesterday, I met up with my old varsity mate, James. Our ostensible aim was a trip to the Reading - QPR match, but it was always going to become a convivial pre-Christmas session. I collected him from the station and we drove to a pleasant boozer on the other side of the M4 where we met up with my Reading-supporting next-door neighbour, Steve, and his dad. Tragically, it was an early kick-off so it wasn't long before the long march to the Madejski Stadium had to begin.

Architecturally, the 'MadStad' is a very fine object. You can sit in the gods and marvel at the leg-room and its cathedral-like splendour. But as a place to attend a football match it's a rather forlorn and dismal experience. Let's go further than that. As a communal objet d'art it's nice enough, but as a football venue it's a total disaster. The match in front of you (or far below you, if you're up high) becomes an interesting spectacle but you feel utterly detached from it. There is no buy-in to it. You aren't a participant in the occasion. You're not even a football spectator. You're just a sort of casual observer. But lots of lovely leg-room, which is what modern stadium design regards as the top priority. To make things worse, the nearest pub is almost 30 minutes walk away, and away fans are treated like lumps of excrement. Those who come by public transport have to wait more than an hour to be allowed on a bus back into the town. The crush in the away end at half time was more frightening and more dangerous than I've seen at any of the older stadiums in the land. A truly dreadful place for football, and one I won't hurry back to. It didn't help that we outplayed them but lost.

My own team play in a cramped stadium with hardly any space to squash your legs into. It's uncomfortable and there are strips of the pitch that you can't see without getting up and craning your neck. It takes ages to get in and the catering is atrocious. But what a great atmosphere. You're up close to the action, right on top of the pitch, and the spectators are very much part of the event. Even better, the place is surrounded by pubs, chip shops and tube stations.

Hmmm. I just re-read the line that the Madejski Stadium isn't a place I'll hurry back to. Funnily enough, I do plan to hurry back to it as it hosts the finish line of the Reading Half Marathon on March 6th. This will be a quite different occasion, and should be a much better experience.

So anyway, nine pints of decent ale and a box of Quality Street later I staggered to bed last night, having already written off the chances of running today.

Oh, the glorious unpredictability of life. Perhaps it was the foresight of going to bed at ten o'clock and drinking a couple of pints of orange squash before the coma kicked in, but I woke this morning feeling fresh as a daisy -- though it took me some time to realise it. I lay there for a while, just assuming that I must be feeling terrible. But it eventually dawned on me that I was OK. Not only that, but the morning was sunny, and the church bells were ringing out across the village. Within a half hour or so I was pounding the towpath, feeling shockingly good.

To ratchet up the surprise yet further, I ran all of 8.3 miles, including three sizeable hills. It was close to the summit of the third that I finally had to stop to walk. Inexplicable. I arrived back home feeling tired but horribly smug.

In a way, very annoying. Next time I go out boozing I'll have to mix my drinks a bit more.

Boxing Day 2004

-- What sort of pizzas does Good King Wenceslas like?
-- Deep pan, crisp and even.

Some words have magic attached to them. Take "gout".

In French (admittedly with a circumflex hovering over the u), it means "taste", and is a rather mysterious word. Le goût du terroir, the taste of the earth, is a mystical quality not just attached to, but actually giving rise to, the individual character of a wine or an olive oil or a cheese, and very probably to an Eric Cantona or a Thierry Henri too. The land explains the quality, is the message.

But I digress. Our gout is nothing much to do with the French goût. Our gout is an affliction suffered by (particularly) blokes in their forties. I'm a bloke in his forties.

Here's more detail than you need:

Recurrent acute arthritis of peripheral joints caused by the accumulation of monosodium urate crytals. Often presents as pain and swelling confined to one joint. The big toe joint is commonly affected. The arthritis occurs secondary to an inherited abnormality of purine metabolism, resulting in the deposition of uric acid crystals (sodium urate) within the joint space and articular cartilage. Usually due to overproduction of uric acid but may be a result of under excretion. The problems partly arise because neutrophils release lysosomal enzymes as a result of damage to the phagosome membrane by ingested crystals. Suggested treatment: colchicine acts to reduce the attack by inhibiting lysosome phagosome fusion.

My version of this is:

Sore toe.

The magic comes in because you have only to mention the word to some people and they collapse with laughter, making jokes about imbibing too much vintage port. It's all... very... amusing. Yes, gout has an image problem.

I get it a couple of times a year. Every time it happens, people ask me how I can run with this problem. The answer is that I can't. Not when it's bad - but it's usually bad only for a day or two. Usually. This time its intermittent presence has been felt for ten days now, and it's getting a bit boring.

When it does happen, I'm reminded that it was one of the reasons I started running in the first place. I read somewhere that exercise would help the problem as it would improve circulation -- and it certainly has.

The outcome of all this gout-chatter is the news that I've run only once since last Sunday, when I had my surprisingly good 8.3 miles. If it hadn't been Christmas Day I probably wouldn't have done even that, but I couldn't fail to get out there early on Christmas morning. It's one of the purest runs of the year. Almost no traffic and very few pedestrians. The people you do see are unusually cheerful. They peer out from very new looking scarves, and wave at you with very new looking gloves. "Don't panic", I reassure myself. "They'll be back to normal tomorrow."

Tomorrow I'm supposed to be doing the Cliveden 6 mile cross country. It was always going to be a struggle to get through this notoriously tough race, but a painful toe, virtually no preparation, and several days of over-eating haven't made it any easier. Will I do it? I don't know. I'll prod the toe and my conscientiousness on what I suspect will be a cold morning tomorrow. Tonight the moon shines brightly, and the frost is cruel. But Christmas, mercifully, is over for another year, and perhaps I should give thanks by limping up and down a murderously steep, frozen hill. Three bloody times.

Mon 27 December 2004 - Cliveden 6.5m X-Country

I got up this morning and jogged up and down the stairs a couple of times to test my toe. The signs were bad. It was a major disappointment. I'd hoped to start the week with some positive news, but it wasn't to be.

Yes, the toe felt absolutely fine, and I had no excuses to stay away from the race.

As usual, I left late, and found myself bombing down the M4 at high speed. My excuse this time was the de-gunkification of the soles of my Asics Gel Guts. I bought these items, my first pair of off-road shoes, just a few weeks ago specially for this race. I wore them once on a very muddy run to check they were OK, and had neglected them ever since, meaning the spectacularly contoured soles were still filled with rock-hard muck. This rendered them useless as off-roaders, so I had to operate on them without delay. I cursed my lack of organisation, but was at least grateful that M didn't catch me at the kitchen sink, levering nuggets of granite-like dog shit from my shoes with one of her best knives. Twice she called out from the next room: "What are you doing in there?" Twice I replied: "Nar-thing". Usually, the second straight bat would have been followed by the terrifying sound of dainty but determined footsteps, then a murderous shriek, then a tirade. Today I got away with it.

A few miles up the motorway, my feet started to freeze, and I realised that water must have got into the shoes. Only one thing for it. I had to change them for my ordinary shoes, and give my trainers a chance to dry out a bit. But I didn't have time to stop, so had to swap them while hurtling up the M4 at 95 miles an hour. Pretty terrifying, but it did the job. Changing back into them at Cliveden, they were warm and dry.

Cliveden is now owned by the National Trust but operates as a hotel these days. It's been rebuilt twice, following fires, since the first house went up in the middle of the 1600s. Its heyday came in the first few decades of the last century, after it had been bought by William Astor, the Bill Gates of his day, and given to his son Waldorf Astor, and daughter-in-law, Nancy. I've always had a thing about those country house parties of the twenties and thirties, and the Cliveden ones were legendary, with people like Churchill and Roosevelt and Charlie Chaplin and George Bernard Shaw making frequent appearances. Ex-PM Harold Macmillan was another frequent guest, and when told years later that the house was to become a hotel, is said to have remarked “My dear boy, it always was.”

And Cliveden really does have that ghostly "Last night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again" quality, looming as it does at the end of a long gravelly drive winding through the forest.

It was a freezing morning but the sun was out, creating one of those blissful wintry days that running was invented for. Combined with Cliveden, this should have been an exciting run in prospect. But my recent inertia was worrying, and the absorption of much wine and chocolate and other festive junk food over the past few days hadn't helped. As usual, I amused myself by examining people's shoes and socks while waiting for the hooter to... hoot. The bloke in front of me was wearing ordinary grey, patterned work socks and a pair of football boots. How very... individual.

Which reminds me of the story about Sir Thomas Beecham, when he was conducting the LPO in rehearsal one day. Noticing a new woodwind player, he said, "And you are Mister...?" "Ball", came the reply. Beecham looked perplexed. "Ball? Ball? How very singular."

We set off, back along the cobbles then the gravel drive and into the woods. Here the road turned into a muddy track then a grassy hillside, then a track again. Much of the race took us through dense wood, intercut with a lovely stretch of rural towpath along the River Thames. The first 1½ miles had been suspiciously downhill. My experience of races is that what goes down must, sometime, tragically, come up. 1½ miles in, we got our comeuppance as we hit a set of very steep steps up a fearsome hillside. 175 of them by my reckoning. They weren't just steep but deep, so it wasn't like running quickly up a staircase. It was a step up, then two or three soft, muddy strides, then another step up. This seemed to make it far worse as it was impossible to get a rhythm going. Halfway up, I stopped trying to run, and walked quickly instead. Stopping to walk in a race normally seems fraudulent, but this time almost everyone else was doing it so it became an allowable sin.

We finally got to the top where, a couple of hundred yards further on, we found ourselves back at the start for the end of the first lap. The second wasn't an exact copy of the first, and even managed to be more beautiful. This was quintessential winter running. I was on my own now, plodding through the forest, seeing my breath in front of me. It was like exploring a long cavern, yet it wasn't dark and it wasn't frightening. The opposite. The combination of the golden-brown leaves, the crunchy frosted path and the flickering sunlight was theatrical magic. The race was an ethereal corridor through the forest, and well marked with streamers hanging from occasional trees. But there were all sorts of other tracks and trails leading off the main one that set me thinking about the great 1915 Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken (often mistitled The Road Less Travelled). The writer talks about the choice he faces by two paths in the forest, and how he opts for the one not so well trodden. It set me thinking that runners are often people who like to take the road less travelled, and how this can set us apart. The fabulous deceit we cast is to make non-runners think that it's us who are being ultra-conventional.

Later when I got home, I had to look up the poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The race was tough, but it turned out to be eminently do-able. With every race entry seems to come an unopenable box, a threat, a chunk of fear, a reason why I need to wriggle free from the commitment. But this was my 25th race since I began running three years ago, and I'm beginning to understand that the bark of a race is always worse than its bite. I'm glad I turned up for this one. The long forest stretches were pieces of some childhood fantasy, and the frosty, private track along the banks of the Thames, beneath the low-hanging branches, with Cliveden in the distance, was like taking in a piece of English social history. It was impossible not to wander back to the early decades of the last century and wonder who else had shared this road less travelled.

It wasn't fast, but it was never going to be. This wasn't a race for speed or competition, but a race for reflection. The last couple of days have been dominated by the news of the earthquake and tidal wave in the Indian Ocean, and today's run was a chance to do what races rarely allow us to do while they're in progress: celebrate the simple joy of running, and of being alive.

Wed 29 December 2004

I woke up this morning, realised in a panic that I hadn't been shopping for hours, and had to spend the afternoon worshipping at the supermarket when I should have been running. One task bled into another, and eventually it was 20:45 when I got out.

Dark of course, but not cold. The 3½ run was more of a struggle than I expected. It's true that I've not run much in the past couple of weeks but I thought the Cliveden plod might have blasted a bit more energy through me.

Fri 31 December 2004

Tomorrow's 10K race in Hyde Park is suddenly in the balance. All was going swimmingly until this afternoon, when I managed to trip over a tree root on a footpath. No serious injuries, just a few grazes, but the painful toe seems to have woken up again. I'll have to take a late fitness test.

I've also broken one of my cardinal rules about alcohol the day before a race. New Year's Eve was suddenly too tempting. On top of that, I heard today that I've got a new job, and a small celebration seemed to be in order. A glass of wine with my chow mein was surely allowable? Inevitably, this became 3 or 4, and suddenly a trip to the local pub for a couple of beers seemed an inescapable social necessity.

But who really cares? It's new year.

Let's hope it's a good one ahead for all of us.

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