Monday 15 August 2005 - Nashua, New Hampshire

Early yesterday morning, I'm wandering round the garden with a cup of coffee, inspecting the newly-planted, but ailing, beech hedge, and offering a bit of encouragement to my sauvignon blanc vine by attacking its neighbour with some blunt secateurs. The usual thrush twitters in the usual cherry tree. All is well in rural Berkshire.

A few hours later, I'm on another continent, crawling through the traffic outside Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, peering up at the top of the bleachers where a congested line of jubilant silhouettes can be seen punching the air. Some feverish internet hunting this past week couldn't produce an affordable ticket, so this particular Things I Must Do Before I Die box must remain unchecked for a while longer.

Ten minutes later, on Highway 93 out of Boston, one of the densest cloudbursts I can ever recall drops with no warning. An experience not to forget. For the next 5 or 6 miles, all I can see is the dim red glow of the foglights on the car in front. Shortly after this, I hear on the radio that the Red Sox game had been called off. I'm glad I didn't get a ticket.

Mansfield Reformatory

Running has been taking a holiday recently. A complete break now and then is supposed to be a good thing, but halfway through a marathon training program? Perhaps not. This evening, after finishing work, I got in my hire car and drove for a few miles deeper into New Hampshire till I came across an expanse of pine forest. I pulled off the main road and went for a meander down some country lanes deep into its heart.

Driving in the US is one of my favourite things. I think I've talked before about the summer we drove from Florida up through Alabama and Louisiana, then up the Mississippi to Memphis, before winding back through Georgia. What a fascinating experience that was. Blues music, jazz, cajun, R'n'B, Rock'n'Roll, Country. Almost the entire history of modern music in one patch of America. All wrapped up in the Civil War.

Another time I spent a long weekend driving alone from Washington to Boston via Philadelphia and New York. It was the week before Christmas. Freezing but festive. So many adventures and memorable sights.

We had another good one the week after the Chicago Marathon on 2002, when we visited Hal Higdon at his house on the shores of Lake Michigan up in Indiana, before continuing up around Michigan State, through Detroit (meeting Berry Gordy's nephew who took us around the old Tamla Motown studios), back through Ohio where I met up with Tom Rizman, long-time QPR correspondent. We came back through Amish country to visit the old Mansfield Reformatory (pictured) - where Shawshank Redemption was filmed. There's always something interesting to discover in a car in the States.

Tonight I parked up and found that path into the forest. Running wasn't easy. It was a week since I'd been out, and the evening was warm and humid. But I persisted. The trail underfoot was soft and springy; the smell of the pine, fantastic.

A mile or so in, I came across a small road with quite a few cars parked along it. A bit further on was a clearing in the forest, and here were twenty or so 10 year olds in bright red football jerseys, padded shoulders and helmets, running through some awkward routines in front of their proud parents. I was glad to have an excuse to stop for a while.

Only three miles or so, but it's a start. Trouble is, do I have a chance of staying on the healthy side of the line? This is pizza and burger country. Seems unlikely.

Wednesday 17 August 2005 - New Hampshire

Join me in Peabody, Massachusetts, where the country music is playing softly in the hotel ballroom. I sit directly beneath the gargantuan chandelier and stare down at the swirly carpet, trying to avoid eye contact with the other 60 or 70 suckers. Suddenly I hear footsteps approaching, and a voice cries: "Ah, and you must be Reg Varney!"

Must I? Oh god, yes, I must. Why do I find it so hard to resist putting stupid names on unimportant forms?

"Reckernised the English accent when you came in", he explains, with a grin the size of Uncle Sam's Y-fronts. "Figured that must be you, Reg. I'm Spencer from U-taw, and I'll be speakin' this evenin' ". I shake hands with this outsized cartoon of a man in his expensive suit and gleaming Italian shoes. He produces some bits of paper and a large sticky label bearing the legend REG, which he presses onto my chest.

From which dusty, distant corner of my memory had the star of On The Buses suddenly emerged with no warning as I completed the online form? I don't feel much like a Reg Varney, it has to be said, nor any other sort of Reg, but I am stuck with the name for the evening, and that is that.

Ever keen on collecting new experiences, I'd signed up to attend a "seminar" that I'd seen advertised on very early morning TV. Sort of four-in-the-morning early morning. The British Summer Time body clock hadn't quite wound itself down yet, so I'm waking up at about 4 feeling ready to attack a new day. I'm also feeling quite capable of curling up and going to sleep shortly after lunch.

The event offers to teach me how to get rich beyond my wildest fantasies by playing the stock market. It doesn't actually say so, but this is the barely-concealed subtext. Invisible to the naked eye, but clear enough when our greed goggles are in place. Of course, with the even more powerful cynic goggles on, I know that the real intention of the evening is to make Spencer and his friends rich, and not me. Except that I'm genuinely not in the market for whatever expensive service they will eventually reveal. Geography will, I hope, keep my money separated from Spencer.

So why am I here? Research, partly. I've recently started the frightening experience of digging up scraps of pension fund collected down the years, and assembling them all in a S.I.P.P. - a 'Self Invested Pension Plan'. The meagre total has to be put to work if I'm going to have any eventual retirement to look forward to, and I'm gathering my knowledge where I can - even here in the USA. I want to know something about the technical analysis of the markets, even if it's enough to make me realise it's not for me. More than that, it's the chance of watching someone's spiel that really appeals to me. Cheap theatre, and I enjoy it in the same way that I enjoy calling into a Crown Court from time to time to sit in the public gallery and watch the barristers perform.

The cheap seats aren't disappointed. Spencer is quite a speaker when he gets going. I'm suitably entertained, and I even learn a few things about Stochastics, moving averages ("the MACD") and the importance of institutional money flow. His earnest soliloquy is peppered with expressions like "cow pounding". I suspect this isn't really Wall Street jargon.

The introduction at the start means I'm treated like an old buddy. At one point he asks: "Tell me Reg, do you want to die a poor man?"

Later, he plants a heavy, paternal hand on my shoulder and declaims to the room with sermon-like gravity: "Reg is an honest man. I say that Reg is an honest man. You're an honest man, aren't you Reg?"

Everyone stares at me, and I feel my cheeks redden.

I nod meekly.

Thursday 18 August 2005 - New Hampshire

And no running today either. Instead, another slice of America life to enjoy at the local ballpark. I arrived just in time to hear the announcer intone: "Lay-deeeez and Gennelmen.... Welcome to the never-ending, non-stop, summer of fun here at the historic Holman Stadium."

And it was pretty good fun too, even if the home side, Nashua Pride, went down to a spirited display from the Long Island Ducks. Odd looking players. Seemed to fall into one of two moulds: hobbit or Jimmy Saville.

I sat in the 'club seats' which offered the privilege of waitress service. The chilli dog and soda, following last night's Mexican and the previous night's dustbin-lid size pizza, signed and sealed the end of my lukewarm resolution to aim for a healthy week.

It also looks like the end of my plan to do the Loch Ness marathon.

Saturday 20 August 2005 - New Hampshire

My baseball knowledge needs polishing. I left the game on Thursday under the impression that the local team had lost 6-2. Apparently they actually won, 3-1.

An alcohol-free week is never as much fun as a free alcohol week. I managed to scale the working week without the distraction of a hangover, but made up for it this morning. It was the morning after last night's session at the hotel's gloomy island bar, where I chewed the cross-cultural fat with Frank the barman and a few locals. Baseball, Bob Dylan, George W and Iraq, and the joy of atheism. The usual agenda items got ticked off before we did. Wheat beer is a fine lubricant, oozing across the world, from Dusseldorf to Nashua via Shepherds Bush. I can recommend the Sam Adams.

It's been a tiring day, though not, alas, anything to do with running. Sedentary fatigue. I sit here in my hotel room at midnight with a glass of fine Californian sparkling wine in my hand, peering at a map, reflecting on the 300 miles I drove today, most of them on minor, twisting, rural roads through the low-lying clouds of the White Mountains, a glorious national park in the north of New Hampshire. The wooded hills and cool, rocky cascades are spectacular, and combined with the lovely Shaker villages and incessant drizzle, managed to present me with a delightful hybrid of England and the monsoon season in Nepal. I could live with a calm civility like this.

Regina Spektor

As always, one of the best parts of driving in the US is the radio. I spent much of the afternoon enjoying The Next Big Thing on Public Radio. You can listen to the show here, though I doubt if that link will remain current for very long, so catch it if you can. It's the one featuring the extraordinary Regina Spektor, a name new to me. Her music, her perspective, her voice, her looks, her poetry (and it isn't clear where one ends and the others start) are refreshing and truly wonderful. Just listening to her as I wound up the twilit mountains through the clouds, I just knew she'd be beautiful too. The later research didn't disappoint. She left Moscow with her family during Perestroika to move to the Bronx, and everything that comes out of her, comes out of that. Most people would hate her, which I suspect is why I don't.

I wonder if her friends call her Reg? We could share my badge.

Sunday 21 August 2005 - Boston

Final night in the US, in a hotel twelve floors up, looking across the Charles River to the illuminated skyscrapers of Boston. If I could open this window I could probably hear the Rolling Stones playing at Fenway Park. I just heard an interview with the mayor on the radio, explaining that the area around the venue would be heavily policed. It reminded me yet again how the world has changed. When I was a kid, the apoplectic local mayor would be trying to get the Stones banned for corrupting the youth. Now?

"Let me just say", he drawls in his thick Boston accent, "that I can't get no satisfaction from handing out all these extra parking tickets to fellow Stones fans..."

It's been a good trip, though I'm enjoying a crisis in my running.

Enjoying? Well, yes. Enjoying.

Running is a cerebral activity; every bit as cerebral as it is physical. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Running has been good this year, but now it's stopped, just short of the final 6 week stretch to the Loch Ness Marathon. Yes, my running has capsized. It will be rescued, and it will be better than ever, but not in time for the monster.

What went wrong? Hard to say. What ever goes wrong? A cocktail too strong; a cocktail too far. I shrug, and I smile.

I've been running for 4 years now, and it's long enough to know that plans will self-combust when least expected. There will always be collapses, gaps and explosions. Just as often, unlikely new enthusiasms will pop out like frogs from the compost heap. At times like this, you remember who your friends are, and you listen to them. I've been grateful that people have continued posting messages on the forum, emailing me about one thing or another, and even (in Nigel's case) inviting me over for an evening run and a curry - even though it was that curry that finally helped to break my weakening resolve.

I'll get back home, and I'll begin again, though perhaps not immediately. I need to do some thinking. If the regular crises always get back on track with a quarterly pep talk, this one needs something more. This one needs the annual conference; the shake up. Internal heads will roll.

I know what I need, and it's not a new target or a new destination. What I need is a new roadmap. New tools. New perspectives. I need to change my attitude to food and nutrition. The weighing scales and the old metrics are moving out of my thinking. It's attitude that must change. I need to dispense with determination. If you need determination, it seems to me that you must be starting from a position of weakness. You're in the boxing ring with your fists up, ready to fight your way out.

No more.

I'm climbing out of the ring and walking straight to where I want to go.

That's it, isn't it? Up till now, I've seen the road to a marathon or to my current running goal as some long path with a boxing ring every now and then. Every couple of weeks I reach the ring and have to fight myself before I can proceed.

No more.

I'm fed up with this endless schedule of useless and strength-sucking confrontations with my own will. Bollocks to it. I eventually stopped smoking by getting fed up with fighting myself. In the end, I beat it intellectually. I walked away from the fight, and away from the problem. I just refused to accept that it was a problem, and the perceived enemy shrivelled up and blew away.

This is how I will deal with running and nutrition and health. I'm approaching a watershed, and I have decided to walk over it and carry on without noticing. Fighting talk I know, but it seems to me the better way. Give me a few days, and I'll explain how I'm going to do it.

Talk to the foot...

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