Mon 2 Feb 2004

A bad couple of days. After a poor run on Saturday I was looking forward to something better yesterday, but it didn't happen. Then today I've been ill with what seems like some kind of food poisoning so I wasn't able to get out. And I'm not feeling much better now, so perhaps it will be another missed day tomorrow.

I'll call it an unscheduled rest, and not worry about it. In the training schedule I'm doing this is a 'step back' week in any case, so I can probably allow myself to take a couple of days off. Better than trying to run while feeling the way I do.

Tues 3 Feb 2004

Feeling much saner than I was yesterday, but... but I find myself in that tragic no-mans-land where I'm probably fit enough to return to work tomorrow, but still not quite up to running, or going to the pub, or eating furnace-like curries.

Despite being on the up, I sense that this week may be something of a write-off. M is away in Edinburgh with her job, so from tomorrow, I fear I may find myself plunged into the kind of lonely, hollow despair that will drive me into the local taverns for the sort of fragile, momentary solace that only other middle-aged men and attractive young barmaids (I'm told) can truly understand.

For anyone feeling short-changed by the last few entries here, can I point you in the direction of the forum where you'll find some great training updates from Antonio, Nigel, Riazor Blue and Seafront Plodder. It's a funny thing, but ever since I started keeping this running blog, although I've had a steady stream of messages from people saying that they find it "inspiring" to read, for some reason, I've never really taken them seriously. OK, so some people may find it occasionally interesting or mildly amusing, but "inspiring"? Surely not. And yet, when I read these entries from these guys, yes, I do find myself feeling positively inspired myself. So perhaps... just perhaps... those nice people who email me are telling the truth after all? Crikey.

But please do read the training diaries of these guys, which are tremendous, and if anyone wants to start their own, please email me.

Sun 8 Feb 2004

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It is five days since my last confession.

A very bad week to relate. I even considered inventing a life-threatening condition to let me off the hook, but thought better of it -- but only because I might need to use that ploy on another occasion, and I suspect it's a joker that I can't play too often.

The week began with a watertight excuse. Much vomiting, dizziness and associated unpleasantries came a-visiting on Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday I had perked up, and even managed a fragile four miler on Wednesday. But the appetite for running was diminishing just as my appetite for solid food was returning. The problem was that my appetite for liquid nourishment blossomed yet further in mid-week. M has flown off to Edinburgh for some flag-waving workfest, leaving me to contemplate both my navel and the Good Beer Guide. In isolation, these activities are innocent and harmless, but conducted simultaneously? Fatal.

Thursday was a night out with the chaps from work, Friday night was... Friday night, and yesterday was football and all the related wickednesses.

A day or two into this Bohemian schedule, I'd decided (perhaps "realised" is a better word) that this was going to be an R & R week. You have a choice in this situation. You can plunge yourself into the runner's slough of despond, and flap about there indefinitely. Or you can hurriedly rearrange your training programme, and somehow pretend that this is a reasonable time for a break, and that you had been planning such a thing for a while, and next week everything will be fine again. And anyway, rest is important. This is what I did. (Aside: I just looked up "slough of despond" to check it was a reasonable metaphor, and the given definition seems perfect: a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. Even the acronym, SOD, seems appropriate.)

I agonised over all this for a while this week, until realising that agonising over it was half the problem. Best to decide to go crazy, or decide to fall back into line. Rudderless drifting seemed the worst option. Decided to go crazy for a few days. Ate some burgers and Chinese takeaways and plenty of Toblerone which, thanks to Riazor Blue on the forum, is now the RunningCommentary quick carb-injection of choice. Plenty of beer required to wash it all down.

And it becomes my thought for the week. Although I'm feeling fat and torpid and horribly unfit and totally demotivated at this moment, one of the many great things that running teaches is that it's easy to start again.

Every training programme I've embarked on has been interrupted by these invisible pot holes. At first, lying there in the dark, wondering what the hell happened, it seems like you've come to the end of your journey. But no. Dust yourself down and get going again. A little painfully and breathlessly at first, but that melts away within a day or two and there you are: back on track again.

Taking a week out of your marathon schedule to book into an opium den is not a recommendation. But if you do it, or if you suddenly embark on an extended lost weekend, don't panic. And certainly don't give up on your journey. Enjoy yourself, get it out of your system, then wake up tomorrow and just get on with it again.

If nothing else, a few days of inactivity actually proves just how nourishing and inspirational running is. What seems at first like some kind of 'holiday from punishment', is quickly shown to be the precise opposite. What may have started life as a few days of fun, soon becomes a kind of degradation that sucks you dry of energy and self-respect. Scuttling about in the gutter with the rats and the cockroaches isn't that interesting or pleasant after all.

Right. Good. I've talked myself back into it now.

Mon 9 Feb 2004

Well, it may be "easy to start", but that first mile is still tough. It's all about incongruity really: a good yardstick of fitness. It seems that the fitter you are, the more sort of natural you feel when you're running round the streets. Adonis-like youths with rippling biceps stand aside in silent admiration. Pouting, sighing housewives ogle you as you pass. Gangs of hair-tearing schoolgirls scream their phone numbers at you in discordant desperation.

Conversely, when you're feeling tubby and out of condition, you're devastatingly out of place as you trudge along. Small children burst into spontaneous floods of tears as you come near. Porcine schoolboys in Chelsea shirts oink and squeal with derision. Farmers with bushy sideburns drive their rusty, untaxed jalopies through muddy puddles, trying to drown you into submission. Old ladies beat you round the head with their knobbly walking sticks, spraying you with toothless blasphemies for good measure.

An outcast in your own land.

Today I existed largely in that second category. Largely. Good choice of word. Yet I still got through my 3½ miles.

For the rest of the day I've felt nothing less than regal. First time in six days.

Sun 15 Feb 2004

It's good to be reminded that running makes a difference to the world. Today saw a spectacular illustration of this.

The running week hasn't been trouble-free. It was good to get that first 'revival' jog on the board on Monday. The rest of the week though has been hit-and-miss. I've managed another couple, but both were shorter than planned. Work has been encroaching on my life again, squeezing my running time.

Today I was up early, planning to get out for a decent long run. The schedule says 7 miles as it's a 'step-back' week, but I planned on at least 10. Races are beginning to loom from the mist, and with bloody daggers in their teeth. Silverstone Half on March 7, Bath Half on March 14 are the immediate threats. I may have beaten off the Kingston 16 the week after that, but I can't be certain it isn't just hiding round the corner. So I need to extend my weekend runs to prepare for battle.

It's always a mistake to check email and the odd website just before heading off for an early run. I got trapped in the Crimson Room for a while, thanks to Seafront Plodder on the forum. One trap led to another. What were Brentford fans saying about their match against QPR yesterday? It hadn't been a great spectacle, but there was so much pre-match venom from the Bees about one of their ex-players who made the sensible move over to us, that a little peek at their verdicts on the 1-1 draw couldn't be resisted. This turned out to be another Crimson Room. Finally escaped, but there was a further delay while I cleared the room of the smoke pouring from my ears.

Now, suddenly, it was mid-day, and I remembered that the Arsenal-Chelsea game was on TV in half an hour. On another Sunday I may have talked myself into missing my run completely, but I did that last week, and couldn't face the evil eye of another blank Sunday spreadsheet cell gazing out at me, accusingly, for the rest of the week. I told myself I'd go running immediately after the game, though there was some kind of rubbery quality about this resolution that made me nervous.

I'd blown it. I could have been out at 8 and back by 10. My gloom deepened as Chelsea, the football enemies of all right-thinking people, began playing uncharacteristically well. Coinciding with Arsenal's unusual timidity, it was time to worry. The appalling inevitability happened just before half time when Chelsea scored. Ten minutes into the second half, with Arsenal still out of sorts, I'd had enough. The depression was threatening not just my run but the equilibrium of the entire planet. Apathy was not the answer here. I had to be proactive.

A minute or two later I was strolling nervily down the drive. If dread would be too strong a word, mere apprehension doesn't seem quite strong enough. I'd not run ten miles for about five months; since the Great North Run in September. Add to this the recent crumbling of self-discipline, the interrupted rhythm, and I couldn't look forward to it. Lethargic, unenthusiastic, unfit.

Hal Higdon came to my rescue. It was almost as though the man himself fluttered down through the dense grey clouds to offer me words of comfort. As I was priming young _colin, my Garmin GPS gadget, to keep me to the usual 10:30 to 11:00 miles, I remembered Hal's stricture: long weekend runs should be run between 45 and 60 seconds slower than race pace. Caramba! This was a lifeline. With my modest race target of 4 hours 50 minutes, I'm aiming for around 11:07 a mile on the day which meant I had to throw a metaphorical bucket of cold water over _colin to slow him right down.

This gave me renewed heart, and I set off through the fresh puddles feeling better. The day was overcast but not cold. It's been a great winter for running. Apart from the celebrated 'cold snap' 2 or 3 weeks ago, it's been mild and fairly dry. It seemed much colder when I was training for London in 2001/2002. Or am I just being nostalgic, the way we think that it snowed every winter when we were kids?

Despite the welcome intervention from Hal, the first half mile was still nasty, as first half miles always are. Down the High Street, right past the station, along the industrial fringe of the village, and SPLASH! - we're out in the countryside. Another few hundred yards and the canal appears. The point where I join the towpath is 9/10 of a mile from home. It's always a good moment because those first mile blues have largely dissipated by now, and I can begin to enjoy the rural scenes.

Plenty of birdwatchers and anglers about today. The former line up on my left, gazing through their binoculars at the lakes beyond the canal, while the latter sit on the right. All are motionless. It's eerie, like running through a hall of statues; or perhaps I'm playing a run-on part in a B-movie where the world's population has been forced to dress up in bizarre costumes before being immobilised by some alien power. I alone can save the planet, but I need to keep up this pace because of what is pursuing me. What was that rhyme from Poe's "Tales Of Mystery And Imagination"?

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread.
But having once turned round, walks on -
And turns no more his head.
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

And isn't running itself a bit like this? I was thinking about this today as I trotted for ten miles along the canal. It can be my thought for the week. I've said before that training for a race, and for a marathon in particular, really is a journey. Not in itself an original thought, though most people conceive of this as a one-way journey towards something. Perhaps because of my unathletic past, I seem more conscious than some that training is a journey that has a source as well as a destination. It's easy to forget what we're moving away from, but this can be just as inspiring, and just as motivating, as focussing on where we're hoping to get to.

This particular leg of the journey was good, and not as punishing as feared. I got home tired but not deflated. After a shower I started feeling suddenly optimistic again. It's what a run gives you back after you've invested all that effort and time.

I sat down in front of the TV with my bananas and raisin bagel and my pot of tea, issued a deep sigh of foreboding, and hit the Play button on the video. But within 30 seconds, Reyes of Arsenal picked the ball up 25 years out and thumped a tremendous equaliser, before, a few minutes later, with the team now playing sublime football, hitting the winner.

Only running can do this for you. Get those trainers on, and make the world a better place.

Wed 18 Feb 2004

Have I ever talked about the Running Spiral? That's just what I call it, but it's a well-known phenomenon, and you probably know it as something else. The slippery slope. Thin end of the wedge.

It's the tendency for running to create a momentum in either direction. Getting into a regular running routine becomes a self-fuelling conveyance, and one that gets better and faster and stronger. Perhaps just a broken skateboard to start with, then a rusty bike, a creaking jalopy, a modest saloon, and finally a glittering people-carrier. And it ends up as one of those because the enthusiasm really does seem to transfer to others, and they too get swept along on your optimism. In reality they probably don't, but you feel so damn good that they seem to be happier and more hopeful and more positive.

But the opposite happens too -- as it did a couple of weeks ago. You miss a couple of runs. Go to the pub in mid-week, then on the way home, devour a portion of fish and chips big enough to feed a small school. And a couple of Mars Bars from the machine on the station platform as you wait for the last train. And that's it. Bang. Gone. The past weeks of achievement and buoyancy are lying there in front of you with a bloody great hole through them. You ask yourself: what's the point of all this sacrifice?

When you use the word "sacrifice", you know you've lost it. When the going is good, we know that running is more sacrament than sacrifice. But hitch a ride on the downward spiral, and the truth soon fades.

It happens because running seems to force us to forget.

When, today, I'm excitedly planning my run for tomorrow, I forget how bloody hard and detestable running can be. I forget how much I hate getting out of bed before six o'clock in winter. I remember it only when I wake up at 5:45 the next morning.

Sometimes I'm just too horrified by the idea to get up. I'll run this evening instead, I tell myself. Or at lunchtime. But I never do. Usually I will get out of bed, feeling resentful and wretched. I'll tarry in the draughty lobby by the back door, pressed against the fridge to keep warm, hating everything. I leave the house and want to cry. You forget all this, you bastard, I tell myself. How can you put yourself through it?

Trudge, trudge, trudge. Slap, slap, slap. Eventually that plateau of equanimity is reached. Oh well, at least you've done your duty for the day, the key trembling in your hands as you try to get the door open. Ears burning from the wind. Chunk of bread and honey, banana. Hot shower, clean clothes. Stroll down to the station, floating. High as a kite on your own sudden, shocking appetite for the day ahead of you. You forget how monstrously narcotic running is. Yes, even to a fat, old, eleven-minute miler like me.

Running is a constant process of self-renewal, and of re-remembering what you promised yourself last time you'd never forget. But we always do forget, and I sometimes think the true, essential wonder of running is just that -- that it makes us forget, and it makes us re-learn. Or allows us to forget and re-learn. Over and over. And even though I've written all that down, I know that tonight I'll still start looking forward to getting out early tomorrow. And in the morning, I'll wake up and think "Oh Christ. No. Not now, please."

This morning I did five miles along the canal under a pale, silver-grey sky. The page between winter and spring is turning, and how good does it feel to be there to witness it. How great to be able to see again, after all that darkness.

Thurs 19 Feb 2004

There's a new name in the world of running today: Andy Commentary.

That's what it says on the front of the envelope that arrived this morning from the organisers of the Adidas Half Marathon at Silverstone. Quite a bizarre coincidence that it should arrive at my house, as I've also entered this event.

With just 2½ weeks to go, it seems churlish to defer my excitement any longer about this, the first race of the season. Hurrah! Hurrah!! Hurrah!!!

It's true that I didn't enjoy it much last year, but I'm giving it another chance. The location is unusual, though it can hardly be accused of being unsuited to racing: it's a Formula One circuit. Last year I found the setting a little on the bleak side. It made me realise just how important an ingredient scenery is in a race. "Scenery" doesn't have to be craggy hills, spectacular gorges, scented dales and blossom-filled avenues. It can, a là the Reading Half, be the town centre, the bridge over the motorway, a circuit of the recreation ground, the red-brick campus and that inspirational climax:- the never-to-be-forgotten panorama of light industrial units adjacent to the A4. Something to look at. Anything to look at.

Silverstone's uniqueness provides some temporary fascination, but the emptiness of the place, the total lack of peripheral diversions (not even a spectator, or a tree) made it a strangely soulless event last year. I hope they've learnt some lessons from last year's inaugural race. For example, at one point last year, we all ran past a loudspeaker blaring out the London Marathon theme tune. It provided a rare moment of warmth, a splash of personality to the race. Why not have more speakers round the circuit, and more music? It really does help.

But the main reason I'm looking forward to it this year is that we've organised a coach up there which is now just about full. It adds a vaguely stressful edge to the day, but so be it. Nothing wrong with a spot of danger here and there. Should be enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to meeting some of the people we've been corresponding with over the past few weeks.

Out this morning for the usual 3½ miles. My weight has been acting strangely recently. After that extended binge a couple of weeks ago, I found myself suddenly 9 pounds heavier than the lowest recent mark I'd reached. But since last Saturday, 8 pounds have re-vanished, so that today's run amounted to a physiological sigh of relief, with my least slow average pace for a few weeks. Others will have different triggers, but for me, nothing makes a quicker impact than losing weight.

I feel like a different person.

Yours, Andy Commentary

Sat 21 Feb 2004

That envelope must be quite a long way off by now, because I keep pushing it - albeit in my own, unremarkable, way.

I wonder if it's heading for the moon? Most of us are, according to David Hays and his otherwise useful running spreadsheet. It has a page called "Around The World" which has a couple of graphics showing how far we've run in our lives, and how much further we have to go before we, er, reach the moon. In my case, 248,568 miles. Right, I see. I'll have a pint of what David Hays has been drinking. Someone should write a book about it: The Lunarness of the Long Distance Runner.

A couple of rather spooky events today. Unusually loyal readers may remember as far back as last Sunday. I went out for a run while Arsenal were losing 1-0 to Chelsea in the FA Cup. I went running to save the world, and succeeded, returning to find that Arsenal had won 2-1. Today, Arsenal were again playing Chelsea - in the league this time. I started listening to the commentary, but turned it off after 30 seconds - Chelsea had scored in 28. This time I knew what to do. I went for a run. Could it work again? It could. I returned a couple of hours later to find that Arsenal had come back to win... 2-1.

The other strange happening centred round a sudden desire to eat porridge. We rarely eat porridge in this household, but I read something in midweek by Hal Higdon about how good a bowl of this legendary cultural adhesive could be after a run. Except Americans don't call it porridge, they give it the unappetising name of "oatmeal". British porridge sales would nosedive if we ever attached such a monochromatic monicker to this mythical substance. But anyway, Hal suddenly dropped porridge into my head this week, and it must have lodged in the back of my semi-consciousness, because as I reached about mile 9 today, I began suddenly to think how good it would be to eat some.

It can't be just me. Food becomes an obsession towards the end of a long run. I start to calculate how many calories I've expended. These are quickly converted into food tokens to be used when I get home. Being a benign sort of fellow, I offer a particularly generous exchange rate to runners. I run through my options like a waiter on the brink of hysteria. Poached egg on toast. Bagels and honey and bananas. Muesli with extra fruit chopped into it. Home made-smoothies. Kippers and scrambled egg with toast. And today, another word makes its emotional debut: porridge. Porridge. It seemed so right, yet I knew I couldn't be bothered to make it. I needed rapid refuelling. I needed not fast food, and certainly not a food fast, but food, fast. That comma makes all the difference. Porridge, porridge. Did we even have any? Another time, perhaps, I thought.

But guess what I saw as I limped into the kitchen after my run? A note from M: "Decided to make some porridge this morning, but made too much. Help yourself to the bowl in the fridge if you want to".

At last. At last, I've discovered what marriage is really for. I'd picked up hints before now, and developed the odd hypothesis, but today I felt I got somewhere near the true heart of the answer.

I ran 11 miles along the canal. For the first time since I was training for Chicago, eighteen months ago, I took a water-belt with me. It's not a habit I've found easy to pick up. Running is a sort of natural, unharnessed, activity, so to have something heavy strapped round your middle, encouraging your gargantuan belly to bounce up and down even more than usual, doesn't seem right.

But today it wasn't bad at all. Perhaps it's because I've lost around 8 pounds this past week, making the weight of the water bottle insignificant. It also meant I could take a handful of jelly babies, long championed in Runners World magazine as being ideal carb quick-shots. The small pouch in the water belt was an ideal storage chamber, and certainly better than the pocket of my shorts, once the venue of a terrible jelly baby calamity which, forgive me, I'd prefer not to relive right now.

Runners like to talk about their gait, or their arm positions when they run, or their breathing. But I want to know about jelly baby technique, because I'm not at all sure I got it right. I tend to, well, just eat them. Chomp chomp, gone in a few seconds. Is that right? I tried sucking a few, but I couldn't get the intensity quite right. Too vigorous and it just vanished; too passive and it gradually melted into a sort of sweet puss that clung to my gums like a horrendous mouth ulcer that had just exploded.

I saw nothing in Tim Noakes's redoubtable Lore Of Running about jelly baby technique. Nothing on the Hal Higdon website. I'll have to post a message on the RW forum. Or perhaps go straight to the top, and write to Paula Radcliffe. It's a while since we've been in touch. I'm sure she'll have relived our handshake after the Chicago Marathon many times. (Oh yeah, and remember that fat English bloke who wouldn't let go of me?)

This week's weight loss has made a real difference, as mentioned yesterday. I've taken the advice of Antonio, the loquacious Almerian frugivore** who contributes regularly to the forum. Plenty of fruit throughout the day, and no alcohol. Yes, you read that right. No beer this week. A heavy price to pay, but maybe... just maybe... worth it.

In the short term.

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** I was talking to someone this week about the words "loquacious" and "frugivorous". But, he said, they're not words you'd ever actually use, are they? I guess not.

Sun 22 Feb 2004

Blimey, two runs in one weekend.

Just 3½ miles on a cheerless, astringent afternoon in rural England. Cold, bleak and blustery, but it's another one in the bin, taking me up to 26 miles for the week. The last time I ran that much in a non-race week was more than a year ago.

This no-beer diet is having some pretty undesirable side-effects.

Tues 24 Feb 2004

The first race of the year may arrive sooner than expected. Yorkshire beckons this weekend, and I've spied a handy local 10K that could fill a hole rather nicely. I'll say nothing more at this stage: there are some choppy domestic waters to negotiate. Know what I mean, chaps?

A chilly 3½ miles this morning. I was out by about 6:30, amazed at how light it is at this time now. The darkness has its own richness and its own challenges, but there's nothing quite like being able to see the world when you run.

The best thing about today's jaunt was that I could really feel the effect of losing a few pounds recently. My weight targets for Silverstone and Bath (11 and 18 days away respectively) might just be reached after all. The greatest incentive is the knowledge that it makes such a difference.

That's all, folks. I need an early night.

Closing thought:

Q. How do you kill a circus?
A. Go for the juggler...

Sorry...

Fri 27 Feb 2004

Mysterious thought for the week:

But at my back I always hear
Tranmere Rovers hurrying near.

In the meantime, we must follow our duties to the frozen north, and will have no internet access. Having just seen the weather forecast (icy blizzards and a few inches of snow), I may be gone some time...

Sun 29 Feb 2004

It's been a weekend of rediscovering old pleasures.

Like sleeping bags. I awoke in one yesterday morning for the first time in a couple of decades. Comfort and snugness aside, it struck me that a sleeping bag makes a very effective contraceptive. Why not make them available from machines in public lavatories? And just as our centenarian citizens get a telegram from the Queen, why not a Prince Charles celebratory sleeping bag on our thirteenth birthdays? It would reduce teenage pregnancies at a stroke.

We drove up to Huddersfield late on Friday night, where I still have a flat. Unlike everywhere else in the nation, property prices in this part of the world seem to have "remained stable", to apply some positive spin, or "fallen way behind the national trend" to be more realistic. It means that I don't have much option but to rent it out, which in turn means occasional trips up here for bracing bouts of carpet cleaning, bath scrubbing and kitchen painting. I don't include these activities in the category of rediscovered old pleasures.

I did my weekend long run on Friday (10½ miles before breakfast) because I didn't know if I'd have a chance to run up here. As it happens, I did. In fact I almost entered a race. I discovered this week that there was a local 10K taking place this morning. Unfortunately I didn't bring the details up with me, so I'd no idea where it was taking place, what time it started or how much it would cost me. All I could do was leave at a normalish race-time minus 1 hour, and drive around the town, looking for purposeful crowds and noting their footwear. An unusually high representation of trainers was the clue, and eventually it led me towards Huddersfield Rugby Union Club. Yes, the race was here, but it wasn't starting for another 90 minutes. "I don't think I can wait, I have a toilet to clean", I explained to the car-park marshal.

A shame, but I couldn't hang around that long. Instead I drove back to the town centre, parked, and set off down the Huddersfield Broad canal. It was bitingly cold. Sometimes I wonder if I'm wise to stick with teeshirt and shorts when everyone else, even here in West Yorkshire where the folk are supposed to be as hardy as mountain goats, gets togged up in leggings and puffy jackets and gloves and bobble hats in this sort of weather.

These were my thoughts as I lumbered through the hail and the frozen puddles alongside the canal.

This is a very different canal from my normal one. Here, there is no lake rich in migrating birds. The only lakes are the massive puddles on the grassless football pitches. There are no anglers here because, I suspect, there are no fish. The canal water is black and oily, and full of debris. The canal winds its way through the town centre and out through the dead industrial sector on the north-eastern fringes. We pass beneath massive monuments to the decline in manufacturing. Imposing Victorian mills, their windows broken, holes punched through the roof by the weather; huge winches and pulleys poised over the canal, now rusted up and redundant; factory chimneys that haven't seen smoke for 30 years or more. On the other side we have the new economy. B & Q, the 'drive-thru' Macdonalds, the new bowling alley and the multiplex cinema.

And here is the site of the famous old Leeds Road football stadium, home of Huddersfield Town, now occupied by its spectacular replacement: the McAlpine Stadium. When I first lived up here, I used to delight in going to matches at the old ground, with its corrugated iron roof over the Cowshed, the enormous terrace along the touchline, and the ricketty wooden stand opposite. In an old English football ground, it's still possible to reach out and touch the past.

I once talked to an elderly gent who recalled going to see Town as a child, back in the glory days of the 1920s. He told me he would walk up to Leeds Road after lunch to meet his father -- who would have worked in one of those ancient, monolithic mills we just passed. He described the mass exodus of men from the factories on Saturday afternoon, all off to watch Town. Most would head for the ground but those who couldn't afford it would climb Castle Hill, high above the town, where you could see most of the pitch. There would be 65,000 in the stadium and another 10,000 up on the hill. In this glorious era, under the management of the great Herbert Chapman, Town won the old First Division title three years in a row. Chapman then went to Arsenal where he managed to repeat his triple championship feat.

McAlpine Stadium

I was vehemently against the plan to replace the old ground. Cultural vandalism, I thought. But the design of the new stadium was so imaginative that I was quickly won over. It opened in about 1995, and even won the Royal Institute of British Architect's annual design prize. For a while at least, the new stadium seemed to lift the club and the fans. They were promoted to the first division and came within a point of the play-offs to the Premiership. But since then they've dropped two divisions, and now languish in the Third. I don't suppose they will ever repeat their achievements of the twenties, but I hope things improve for them. The town and the football fans need something to cheer about.

Three miles along this melancholy towpath, then three miles back. The return leg even had some sunshine, and was altogether a cheerier experience. The run was only 6½ miles in total, but I was pleased that it presented so little difficulty. The longer recent runs have made a difference. They've raised the bar. Until a few weeks ago, anything above my staple 3.5 mile morning run was noticeably harder. Now, I'm cheerily running 6, even 10 miles without feeling the urge to stop for a breather.

Another rediscovered pleasure was this evening's visit to the Slubber's Arms, my northern local. What a grand boozer this is. It's a tiny oasis of civilisation in a rather bleak, dilapidated part of town. Just over the road is the railway bridge beneath which Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, disembowelled a prostitute, and tried to kill another.

The Slubbers is a twenty minute walk from the flat, and one I know well, though I'd forgotten how run down things are up here. Or have they got worse? The nearest pub, The Horseshoe, where I spent many a drunken night as a student, has now closed down. Further along the road is The Black Bull. The landlord was murdered here in a late-night robbery about 5 years ago. It never served another pint.

At least the chip shops are still in business. One of the local ones is called Witbits, a Huddersfield joke that won't be understood by outsiders.

And the Slubbers is still open, and totally unchanged. The same arbitrary paraphernalia on the walls, the same glass-topped tables with the tickets and business cards pushed underneath, the same delicious array of Timothy Taylors beers and, most importantly, the same clientele. I walk in for the first time in five years, and there is Gary, leaning on the bar, sucking on a roll-up, just where I left him. He glances up. "Hi mate. Aright? You've not been in lately." He turns back to his pint. A classic Yorkshire moment. No effusiveness, no sense of surprise.

More and more people came in whose faces, if not names, I recalled. There was a lot of nodding in my direction and solitary words of acknowledgement. They are not a verbose people, though I did manage to tease out a few conversations before the end of the evening.

A gallon of excellent beer later, and M calls by to pick me up on her way back from the Chinese. What a corking evening, and a great way to end a month that started off so badly.

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